Case Study: Pearland ISD achieves enhanced student safety and improved network performance with Fortinet

Texas School District Enhances Student Safety and Network Performance with Fortinet

Pearland Independent School District (Texas) serves more than 21,000 PK–12 students across 23 campuses but relies on a small IT team to secure a large, student-heavy network. Facing rising bandwidth needs, an expanded attack surface and the need to meet Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requirements, the district needed a more powerful, easy-to-manage firewall after legacy options proved costly or ineffective.

Pearland deployed Fortinet’s FortiGate next‑generation firewalls in a high‑availability pair, augmented by FortiGuard AI‑Powered UTP services, FortiAnalyzer and FortiAuthenticator. The solution tightened URL/content filtering and segmentation for students and staff, improved network visibility and threat detection, sustained high performance (handling bursts around 40 Gbps), reduced infrastructure complexity and costs, and freed IT time—boosting student safety and compliance while improving overall network performance.

Pearland ISD

Jon Block

Infrastructure Manager