Case Study: The California State University achieves system-wide next-generation security and lower TCO with Palo Alto Networks

California State University - Customer Case Study

The California State University (CSU) system—23 campuses serving 460,000 students and 47,000 faculty and staff—needed to refresh its common network security as the cyberthreat landscape evolved. Although CSU had long maintained a standardized Common Network Initiative, its existing security stack (including Juniper) no longer met system-wide objectives for advanced threat detection, application-aware policy enforcement, consistent policy deployment, unified management and regulatory compliance, prompting a system-wide RFI and rigorous vendor evaluation.

After a multi-stage technical and TCO evaluation, hands-on configuration testing, and consultation with Gartner, CSU selected the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform. Using an alpha-to-production phased migration—leveraging App-ID, User-ID, Threat Prevention, onsite engineering support, professional services and campus training—CSU simplified to a single-vendor solution with lower TCO, improved administration and stronger protection; more than a dozen campuses have been migrated to date, with a plan to deploy over 100 firewalls across 30 locations.

California State University