Case Study: Hillsborough County Public Schools achieves scalable, CIPA‑compliant web filtering and cost savings with Fortinet FortiGate

Hillsborough County Public Schools - Customer Case Study

Hillsborough County Public Schools, the eighth-largest U.S. district with about 200,000 students across 200+ sites, faced tight IT resources and budget constraints while renewing its web-filtering solution to meet CIPA requirements and handle massive traffic spikes and encrypted traffic. When its incumbent filter came up for renewal the district solicited bids to find a cost-effective, scalable solution that would protect students and support growing online learning demands.

Fortinet’s FortiGate won the tender, delivering high-performance web filtering (including encrypted traffic) and a carrier-class platform that scales toward state bandwidth guidelines. By consolidating Web Filter, DLP, firewall/VPN and other security functions on FortiGate, Hillsborough reduced costs, improved visibility and compliance (CIPA/FERPA), lowered breach risk, and gained an extensible security foundation they can expand with IPS and other services.

Hillsborough County Public Schools

Rick Laneau

Executive Officer, IT Compliance