Case Study: Samaritan Ministries achieves near-real-time threat detection and streamlined endpoint security with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR

Samaritan Ministries International Strengthens Endpoint Security, Gains Near-Real-Time Detection and Response, and Enables Staff Productivity with Cortex XDR

Samaritan Ministries International (SMI) is a 501(c)(3) member-driven healthcare cost-sharing nonprofit serving more than 80,000 members and handling sensitive personal and financial information. SMI needed to improve endpoint threat detection and response, reduce the heavy administrative overhead of its previous EDR, and securely enable a rapid BYOD-driven shift to remote work without degrading VDI performance or developer productivity.

SMI deployed Palo Alto Networks Strata and Cortex XDR—installing the XDR agent on roughly 700 endpoints and leveraging WildFire, Threat Prevention, URL Filtering and Cortex Data Lake, plus a Citrix gateway for remote access. The solution delivered near-real-time detection and one-click isolation, greater visibility into risky user and machine behavior, a 10× increase in remote workers during the pandemic with BYOD protection, improved VDI performance, and roughly a 50% reduction in administration time, freeing SecOps to focus on analysis and support DevOps securely.

Samaritan Ministries

Keith Merriman

Security Analyst