Case Study: Fordham University achieves over 50% reduction in staff firewall management time with Fortinet Security Fabric

Fordham University Reduces Staff Management Time by Over 50% with the Fortinet Security Fabric

Fordham University, a Jesuit institution serving nearly 17,000 students across campuses in the Bronx, Manhattan and Westchester, faced severe cybersecurity strain when remote work during COVID quadrupled its remote users. Aging firewalls were frequently overwhelmed, causing regular VPN outages and forcing staff to duplicate policies across devices—consuming significant time and risking university operations.

Fordham deployed Fortinet’s Security Fabric—FortiGate NGFWs in HA pairs, managed with FortiManager and monitored with FortiAnalyzer plus FortiGuard services and IPS—centralizing inspection and control. The new setup eliminated VPN outages, cut firewall management time by over 50%, reduced resource use to about 19% of previous RAM peaks, and is expected to deliver more than 50% in cost savings as the university standardizes on FortiGate.

Fordham University

Michael A. Pastine

Senior Network Security Analyst