Case Study: North-West University achieves an 80% increase in security efficiency with Palo Alto Networks portfolio

North-West University achieves an 80% increase in security efficiency with Palo Alto Networks portfolio

North-West University, one of South Africa’s largest higher‑education institutions with about 68,000 students and 7,000 staff, faced a sprawling, multi‑campus IT estate that included legacy firewalls and roughly 250 modern and legacy Windows servers. The small security team lacked visibility and agility, spent excessive time on repetitive triage tasks, and needed to move toward a Zero Trust architecture while reducing mean time to detect and respond to incidents.

By standardizing on an integrated Palo Alto Networks portfolio—ML‑powered next‑generation firewalls, Cortex XDR, WildFire, Threat Prevention and centralized Panorama management—deployed with KHIPU’s support, NWU gained automated, behavior‑based visibility and faster, automated response. The university saw an 80% increase in security efficiency, cut response times to seconds, reduced firewall configuration updates by 75%, dramatically lowered alert volumes and MTTR, and accelerated server onboarding from days to under a minute, putting it well on the path to Zero Trust.

North-West University

Martin Venter

Systems Manager