In the fight against heightened security threats to the education industry this year, Georgia’s fourth-largest school district, Fulton County Schools, identified the need to strengthen its security posture to combat malicious attacks on its data and resources. Fulton looked to trusted Microsoft Gold Partner, Forsyte I.T. Solutions (Forsyte), to reduce the ongoing administrative burdens and cost of monitoring, maintaining, and supporting Microsoft 365 and Azure Sentinel with Guardian 365 security managed services.
Founded in 1871, Fulton County Schools (Fulton) is one of Georgia’s oldest and largest school districts with 108 schools, 94,000 students, and 18,000 faculty and staff. Focused on student achievement and a commitment to continual improvement, Fulton understands the importance of strengthening its security initiatives to protect its digital infrastructure.
Fulton began working with Forsyte to streamline its technology operations with the transition from Google to Microsoft in 2020, mandating that all 108 schools migrate from Google Suite and Chromebooks to Microsoft 365 and devices. Fulton planned to deploy Microsoft 365 A5 security workloads and Sentinel through a zero-trust security model following this migration. Having worked on numerous projects together over the past five years, Fulton’s IT leaders, Derrick Johnson and Kenny Kosslow, were confident Forsyte was the right partner for this project. In addition to the deployment of Sentinel, Fulton entrusted Forsyte to develop an automation and remediation service, called Guardian 365, that would protect, detect, and remediate threats to its hybrid cloud environment. Built on the Microsoft security stack, Guardian 365 brings together 8+ portals into one view with AI-powered focus to manage security 24×7. In the Guardian 365 on-demand dashboard, Fulton can see security events in real-time as well as auto-remediation actions made. Fulton’s IT leaders can drill into specific security events at a granular level to gain insights into single user actions that triggered the alerts.
Forsyte continues to help Fulton maximize its investments in Microsoft technologies, while also keeping its goals and objectives front and center. As a trusted advisor and long-standing partner of Fulton, Forsyte has successfully managed numerous IT projects and provided significant financial savings. Fulton enjoys the added benefit Guardian 365 brings to its operations, knowing that Forsyte is constantly monitoring and managing its environment. Guardian 365 continually adapts to the ever-changing security landscape to protect Fulton from cyberattacks while standardizing workflow and increasing cost savings for the district.