Case Study: State of Louisiana achieves real-time visibility, 86% automation, and <2‑minute MTTR with Palo Alto Networks' Cortex XSIAM

The State of Louisiana scales security using AI-driven Cortex XSIAM

The State of Louisiana Office of Technology Services (OTS) supports 34 agencies and 35,000 users but was hampered by an antiquated security stack—legacy firewalls and an over‑capacity SIEM that produced near‑zero visibility, limited storage, manual processes, daily 1–2 hour outages, and roughly $1.3 billion in technical debt.

Partnering with Palo Alto Networks, OTS deployed Next‑Generation Firewalls, Panorama, Cortex XSOAR and adopted Cortex XSIAM to consolidate tools and introduce AI‑driven automation. The upgrade replaced 430+ legacy firewalls, increased data ingestion from about 60 GB to nearly 10,000 GB per day and data sources from 10 to ~40, automated up to 86% of incidents (incident close‑out up to 93%), cut MTTR from 24+ hours to under 2 minutes, freed three full‑time roles, and achieved a reported 300% ROI while delivering vastly improved visibility and scalability.

State of Louisiana

Chase Hymel

Chief Information Security Officer