 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Fortinet Accelerate 18, brought to you by Fortinet. Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of Fortinet's Accelerate 2018. I'm Lisa Martin, joined by my co-host, Peter Burris, and we're excited to be joined by a Fortinet customer, Troy Miller, the director of technical resources from Clark County School District. Troy, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So you're local, you're in the Vegas area. Tell us a little bit about Clark County. I know there's some impressive numbers of size and about your role. Clark County School District, we serve about 320,000 students a day, 41,000 employees. It's the entire county, which last year was about the size of Rhode Island. So basically that's geographically large as well. My role in the district, we're a director of technical resources. We manage the, we bring in 80 gigs of internet each day for all those people to consume, and we're responsible for the edge security. So we don't get down to the desktop yet, but we just make sure they have a accessible and reliable internet. So 320,000 students and 41,000 employees, how many devices is that connecting to your network? Or do you have any idea? Even ones that were just district owned might be closer to 420,000 probably, we've count all the labs. And then another, everyone brings in their own one or two or three devices with them, their phone, their iPad, their laptop. So there's not an exact count, but I'm guessing well over 450,000 probably. And you've been with Clark County for a while and you've been in education for a while. Talk to us about the technology evolution that you've seen take place, the opportunities that that gives educators and students, as well as the opportunities that it provides on the security side that you have to combat. Yeah, a long time ago, I was taught for four years from, I think it was a 93 to 97, and I got into the department I'm in now. But yeah, back then it was one computer that a teacher didn't know how to use and rarely turned on, to now they're using, whether it's be smart boards, giving out iPads, Chromebooks and so on, every kid's connected, and it's important like, we're now a Google school district, so Google classroom, using Google sites and so on. And so it's important. And what the evolution of that is just that you have, it's when you have a reliable internet, and so Fortinet has definitely increased our statute in that. And so that day-to-day instruction can take place, not interrupt them, because if they lose their internet for two minutes, we've deprived these students for all kinds of education. So no, it's important, and now like everything has relied upon it, even our student management system, our ERP, all that stuff is now hosted internally, some hosted externally, so security is a very important part of that. And when you think about the role that you play, you have a specific role within the school district. How does the ability to use a Fortinet-like product inside your role impact your ability to collaborate, coordinate with others in the school district to make sure that everything is running seamlessly? Yeah, this Fortinet is that for us using the Fortinet that we have, it was important to be able to get a better insight. I'm excited about the stuff at the conference this year to really improve upon that, to be able to properly secure those, say VPN connections going out to outside services or to better serve the students in the schools or other business transactions that take place. So it's important on that, and then we can see if something's starting to break down somewhat where to go. And again, our district's pretty separated, it's a siloed a bit, and so it's important we know which department to go to if we're seeing issues with certain things. Now, local governments are notoriously difficult to work with for some technology vendors. How has it been for Clark County working with members of the Fortinet ecosystem? Because security is obviously an increasingly important feature of, well, virtually everything, but including local municipalities. Right, and Fortinet's been awesome. We worked with them through our managed service provider Mosaic 451. So when we moved towards Fortinet just a year and a half ago, that made it a very seamless move because they had the expertise that we didn't at the time. We were brand new to the Fortinet platform. They brought in people from all over to help out with that, to either install it, to set up the policies and so on. So yeah, working with municipalities is difficult, working for ones even more difficult, but Fortinet has made that very easy. What was the catalyst for bringing on Fortinet in terms of some of the challenges that you guys have with your firewalls? Was there any sort of one event or type of events that really catalyzed, hey, we've got a transform here? Yeah, there was a series of events actually. About a year and a half ago we were undergoing about daily one hour, two hour DDoS attacks, fragmented UDP attacks. And our previous firewall vendors, they couldn't, one, they couldn't diagnose it. And two, even once they did, it couldn't handle it. We were basically firewalling our firewall with our edge router. And so that was when I said something has got to change. And I was going to contact at Mosaic 451 and said, I need help, I need, I can't be doing this every day because the staff obviously were upset, so was I. And so Fortinet actually, back then, our first involvement with Fortinet, they sent out two chassis and said, here, try them out, see if this will stop the attack. We think it will. And we got them going within a few days and sure enough, it did. And so that told me I need to make a move. And it took some, obviously, some budget trapeze acts to get that done. But within six months, we were then on Fortinet. And again, once we got the equipment back, it was all, it was, everyone was able to help out, get a setup, and were unique in what we had and moving our policies and so on. So they've been integral in that. So impact perspective, it sounds like you went from these daily DDoS attacks to zero? In how short of a time period? They stopped on their own beginning of January of that year. But we haven't had one at all since then. Or if we, we've had small ones, but the Fortinet's handled them without a problem, they barely bumped them, you know. It's a pretty big impact there that you've been able to make pretty quickly. Oh yeah, we went from, yeah, it was six months before we finally made the Fortinet decision. And that was, we were fortunate, we didn't have to go through an RFP process on that because that would have taken forever and I didn't want to do that. And so, I already said we did an RFP, this one doesn't work, we know this other one doesn't work, so guess what's left? So that's the way we ended up with Fortinet. And like I said, we're very happy with them so far. In terms of some of the announcements that they have made today around utilizing AI technology, they've also talked about their fabric ready partner program. You talked about a partner there. What are some of the things that excite you about what you've heard from them today? Does that give you reassurance? Not only do we make the right decision, but this is something that's going to help us, as we evolve and as security threats naturally evolve and grow as well, that you feel like you have a good foundation on the security side. Yeah, precisely, I'm very excited from what I saw. And you know, there's things, education, especially in this state, is extremely underfunded, so I'd love to go out and just say, oh, I'd like to buy this, like to buy that. And you know, we're up and running with the security fabric, you know. I'm excited about it, but what I'm really excited is the opportunity to grow, we can really show some progress with that. And so while I can't take full advantage of it, or even go to the Ford OS 6, probably anytime soon, but we will be able to start laying the groundwork and I can plan out to start filling off those checkboxes in that security fabric and start providing a better, more secure internet for what I'm responsible for, what I can consume. So education like everything else is changing. What are the set of options that become more available to you and to Clark County School District as a consequence of bringing in a new security fabric that's capable of accommodating a little bit more complexity, a little bit more automation? Well, yes, and a little bit of all of that. For us, what I'm excited about with the Ford is that one, we've got something robust that's going to last us for five to seven years. Those will last even beyond our 80 gigs we're using now if we need to go beyond that before I retire. But the exciting part of that is, like I said, by adding in those different security fabric pieces, I think we'll be able to improve bit by bit. And I know while they're going to improve them even more by the time we finally get there. So that's exciting. You talked about, I'd like to elaborate a little bit more on your organization. It sounds, I don't want to say fragmented, but there's different centers. How has, I should say, what you guys have been able to achieve by bringing Fordinet and in terms of, we talked about this dramatic reduction or elimination of DDoS, are you able to leverage that as sort of a best practice within the school district? Do you see opportunities that this Fordinet partnership can have for you in that respect? It gives us some validity and shows that it did make a difference. We didn't just spend some money on no reason. But yeah, because of it being siloed, what the Fordinet has to give us now is we can know exactly which department to send certain tickets to. What we see, whether it's to be malware or something pinging out that shouldn't, we can better address where it's coming from and what to do with it. And again, Mosaic is our sock. So working with them, working with Fordinet, we've been able to improve our response to minor incidents as they happen. There are other natural issues that the County of Las Vegas deals with that makes Fordinet especially relevant. I mean, obviously great distances, but you've got large mountains surrounding here. It's a very dry environment. Are you finding that there's just things about the location that makes Fordinet that much better choice? I don't know if there's anything environmental. Pretty much what makes us, like I said, on the best choice, not really where we are, but just what we do. And so, like I said, the internet comes to us and then we kind of spray it out from there. And so that availability and reliability is what's important. The sort of where we are doesn't quite matter, but it is the ability to be able to service the customers. So we kind of look at the security kind of transformation that you're on. I've talked to us about some of the achievements that you've made so far in the first year or so. What are some of the things throughout the rest of 2018 that you're looking forward to enabling in your environment with your Fordinet partnership? Some things I'm excited about there is, like you had mentioned for the AI part of that, that I'm really excited to hopefully implement. That just takes, I can use the eyes I have. I only have four security people basically for that organization. Two of them from Mosaic, two of my own people. And so if I can have those people addressing bigger concerns than malware or stuff like that, and the AI can better handle that. So instead of digging through logs, we can just, there it is, block it, or it's already blocked. That would save us, and I can use that talent for more serious items, you know. We're completing a, we already completed our edge redesign and now we're done on that. We're working on our internal network, so if we can spend more time making those things more robust to then take advantage of the security fabric as it, as we're able to take advantage of it, then that's all the better. In most enterprises, there's a partnership that has to be established between security architecture, security operations, the business, and especially employees. Employees have to take an active role to successfully do security. Kids and schools are not necessarily well known for having consistent behaviors. How has that affected your environment and what can enterprises learn as they think about having to serve increasingly unruly customers in their markets? Yeah, that's one of the things I'm just starting to dip my toe into to plan for next year is more of an education for it, but then holding them accountable for that education. Yeah, I don't know which is worse, the teachers or the students. I'm guessing the teachers, but they'll click on anything they see. So it's important to educate them first before I start rolling out some, you know, phishing testing on them and so on, but we have to start doing that because otherwise it doesn't matter how, if something comes in or if they get it off their tablet or, you know, now they've infected the internal and it didn't even get to us, right? And so it's important that education is important. We're going to start trying to hold them accountable for it, but that's a huge challenge and where I'm at. That's like climbing Everest there. So is Fortnett going to help? I think it will. Fortnett's going to be able to help first, to be able to have that insight on what's still working, what's not. You know, we're still seeing these things. All right, how are we? And also recognizing patterns and seeing what people tend to do wrong. Probably help you pinpoint what you need to, that partnership, what the user needs to take more responsibility for. Right, and that's the last thing, it better identifies those issues. We can either see where they've improved or what still needs to be worked on. Great. Well, congratulations on what you've achieved so far. Oh, thank you. And thank you so much for sharing your success story with us and you're on a journey. We wish you continued success with that. Thank you. For my co-host Peter Burris, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching The Cube's coverage of Fortnett Accelerate 2018. We'll be right back after a short break.