Case Study: Wealden District Council achieves resilient, secure remote access with Palo Alto Networks

Simplifying secure remote access at Wealden District Council

Wealden District Council, the local authority for a 323‑square‑mile area of East Sussex supporting more than 160,000 residents, needed a simpler, more resilient way for staff to work securely from anywhere. Its legacy firewall and remote‑access tools created a complex, fragile user experience that frustrated employees and limited IT visibility and remote management, particularly as hybrid working surged after COVID‑19.

Working with partner Softcat, the Council deployed Palo Alto Networks’ ML‑Powered Next‑Generation Firewalls (in an active/passive, high‑availability setup) and Prisma Access SASE to deliver cloud‑scale ZTNA 2.0. The result is unified application and traffic visibility, continuous security inspection, a smoother user experience, fewer help‑desk calls, improved bandwidth performance, and lower operational overhead through simpler management and reduced VPN and token costs.

Wealden District Council

Robert Manktelow

Digital Services Network Architect