Case Study: Catholic Education South Australia achieves seamless, secure BYOD web access with Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks® technology as a key part of CESA’s ceFilter environment delivers a safe, secure and fluid web experience

Catholic Education South Australia (CESA) supports 103 schools with 49,000 students and faced a growing challenge as BYOD and mobile devices increased: legacy, site-specific web security required constant device configuration and manual exceptions, creating a cumbersome, non-scalable user experience that risked compromising safety and added heavy workload to local IT and the service desk.

CESA built ceFilter using Palo Alto Networks’ next‑generation firewall (PAN‑OS) plus in‑house integration components (now open‑sourced), adopting a deny‑listed approach to block dangerous apps/sites while allowing legitimate traffic. The solution delivers seamless, device‑agnostic access with enforced safe‑search and templates for policy management; users can move between home and school without reconfiguration, support‑desk exceptions dropped to almost zero, and about 95% of schools now enjoy a safer, simpler web experience.

Catholic Education South Australia

Simon Sigre

Senior Network Engineer