Lycée Louis Massignon strengthens its security infrastructure with Fortinet

Lycée Louis Massignon (LLM), an Abu Dhabi-based bilingual school, has reinforced its security to keep students and staff safe online by implementing Fortinet Security Fabric, according to a Fortinet press release.

Accredited by the French Ministry of National Education, LLM provides an exceptional academic curriculum and serves around 1700 students ranging from pre-kindergarten (3 years old) through high school (18 years old).

LLM was looking for a secure solution that could be controlled centrally, eliminate operational costs, and provide unified visibility and control over the complete security and network.

Following a market evaluation, the school chose the Fortinet Security Fabric approach, which combines protection across the entire attack surface and cycles with unified management and orchestration, AI-powered security services, granular control, and centralised compliance capabilities. FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) with natively integrated FortiGuard cloud provided web filtering and sophisticated intrusion prevention (IPS) were placed in the LLM infrastructure, reducing complexity by unifying several point solutions into one Security Fabric.

Another component of the solution is the deployment of FortiSwitches, which are managed by the FortiGate NGFW and provide both students and employees with a smooth experience while connecting to wired and wireless networks. Finally, FortiAnalyzer has delivered analytics and automation to improve cyber threat detection and response while streamlining SOC operations.

“Right after the implementation was completed, we have experienced unified management and an ease of operation. In more general terms, we have much more confidence in our security infrastructure. Fortinet’s team was really supportive and attentive to understand our pain points and recommend the best solutions,” concludes Christope Hammami, IT Manager at Lycée Louis Massignon.

The school was required to comply with their Internal Education Auditing Team since they retain a substantial quantity of sensitive data ranging from financial to personal information.

To better meet compliance requirements, reduce the risk of data leaks, keep students safe on the internet, and protect LLM’s reputation and credibility, the school decided to upgrade its security infrastructure to keep up with the growing volume of threats and the sophisticated cyber threat landscape.

“Our former solution was unstable and incapable of blocking inappropriate websites,” says Christope Hammami, IT Manager at Lycée Louis Massignon.

 “Education institutions are amongst the most targeted sectors by cybercriminals, owning to several key factors caused by things like cost constraints, overburdened IT team, and legacy systems,” said Alain Penel, Regional Vice President – Middle East, Fortinet. “With technology being one of the most critical components of 21st-century education, LLM have taken a step in the right direction to reinforce their security posture as it undergoes a security transformation to protect its students and faculty against the constantly expanding attack surface.”