Case Study: City of Mesa achieves secure citizen services and SCADA protection while building an IoT-enabled smart city with Palo Alto Networks

City of Mesa, Arizona, Secures Diverse Range of Citizen Services and ICS While Building the Foundation for a Secure, IoT-Enabled Smart City of the Future

The City of Mesa, Arizona—a half‑million‑resident municipality delivering a wide range of citizen services across many dispersed facilities—needed to protect sensitive systems (like utility SCADA), customer and medical records, and payment data while preparing for a smart‑city future that will introduce thousands of IoT devices and blur traditional network perimeters.

Mesa deployed the Palo Alto Networks Security Operating Platform (next‑generation firewalls, Panorama, GlobalProtect, MineMeld, SSL decryption and threat subscriptions) to create granular application segmentation, enforce MFA access, ingest threat intelligence, and extend controls into cloud and IoT environments. The result: locked‑down access to SCADA and other critical systems, compliance with PCI/HIPAA/CJIS requirements, broader visibility and automated threat response capabilities, and a secure foundation for the city’s smart‑city initiatives.

City of Mesa

Lester Godsey

Chief Information Security Officer