Case Study: New York City Department of Environmental Protection achieves Zero Trust security for its sprawling water infrastructure and cloud migration with Palo Alto Networks

Securing America’s Largest Water Utility Infrastructure

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) BIT group protects the nation’s largest water and wastewater utility—serving 8.6 million residents across 300 facilities and dozens of regional centers—and needed to securely move legacy data center applications to a hybrid cloud while defending sprawling operational systems, third‑party connections, and thousands of field and remote workers. With a small IT team operating in a citywide agency network, DEP required Zero Trust controls, visibility across cloud and on‑premises environments, and the ability to scale protections for new cloud‑based services like its customer billing system.

DEP partnered with Palo Alto Networks to deploy VM‑Series virtual firewalls, next‑generation firewall appliances, GlobalProtect VPN, Panorama management, and threat intelligence. The solution enabled always‑on secure access for 3,000 remote workers, device health checks/quarantine, centralized visibility and threat blocking, and streamlined management for the small BIT team—supporting the agency’s cloud migration, improving detection and response, and strengthening compliance and operational resilience.

New York City Department of Environmental Protection

Vic Kayharee

Cloud Engineer