Abu Dhabi-based French language school boosts security infrastructure with Fortinet

Lycée Louis Massignon (LLM), a French-language school in Abu Dhabi, has deployed Fortinet’s Security Fabric to improve its security infrastructure.

Certified by the French Ministry of National Education, this plurilingual school has over 1700 pupils from pre Kindergarten to high school.

The school had to comply with their internal education auditing team as they store a significant amount of data ranging from financial to personal information. To better meet compliance requirements, mitigate chances of data leaks, and keep students safe on the web, the school opted for the Fortinet Security Fabric. This solution combines protection across the attack surface and cycles with unified management and orchestration, AI-powered security services, granular control, and centralised compliance capabilities.

FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) supporting secure sockets layer (SSL) inspection (including TLS1.3), with integrated FortiGuard cloud-delivered web filtering and advanced intrusion prevention (IPS) were also deployed in the school’s infrastructure, reducing complexity by consolidating multiple point products into one Security Fabric.

Another part of the solution was the deployment of FortiSwitches, which are managed through the FortiGate NGFW, offering a seamless experience when connecting to wired and wireless networks for both students and staff. Lastly, FortiAnalyzer has provided analytics and automation to provide better detection and response against cyberthreats while streamlining security operations centre (SOC) operations.

“Right after the implementation was completed, we have experienced unified management and 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,” said 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.”

Read: How can education sector defend cyberattacks on academic institutions?