DPCD School Board Secures 60,000 Student Devices in a Single Day

SUMMARY

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board (DPCDSB) is one of the largest and most diverse school districts in Ontario, Canada, overseeing 153 school locations, more than 73,000 students, and over 10,000 staff members. The board’s primary mission is to provide an exceptional digital learning landscape while maintaining data privacy and threat protection across all managed endpoints.

Operating at this scale with a small network operations team requires an efficient security infrastructure. Faced with application performance issues, student workarounds to bypass web security controls, and high operational overhead from a legacy solution, DPCDSB needed a different approach to edge protection. By deploying the Palo Alto Networks^® Prisma Browser extension alongside its existing Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), DPCDSB successfully secured and enforced safe-browsing policies on 60,000 Chromebooks. The migration resolved classroom disruptions, secured student web browsing natively without complex SSL decryption, and reduced network support tickets by 90%, freeing resources to focus on critical infrastructure projects.

RESULTS

90%

reduction in cybersecurity support tickets

100%

compliance and browser coverage across 60,000 student Chromebooks

1 day

to complete full district deployment

CHALLENGES

Security that disrupted learning and overwhelmed the team.

The district’s previous endpoint solution created cascading problems across classrooms and the network operations team:

User workarounds: Staff members and tech-savvy students could easily disable or work around the previous proxy solution.
Application compatibility limitations: The legacy extension frequently clashed with educational applications.
Decryption failures: Legacy inline SSL decryption models from a previous solution broke core workflows, created administrative bottlenecks, and struggled to decrypt major platforms.
URL filtering complexity: Fragmented environments resulted in conflicting website categorizations, high false positives, and visibility gaps.
Operational bottlenecks: Modifying edge access and filtering rules required navigating multistep configuration workflows across separate administrative environments.

SOLUTIONS

Securing the edge without inline friction.

DPCDSB deployed the Prisma Browser extension across 60,000 student Chromebooks to replace an endpoint agent that had become a source of classroom disruption. The previous solution blocked approved learning software and relied on complex SSL decryption that caused persistent connectivity failures. Prisma Browser takes a different approach. By enforcing security controls natively at the browser level, it eliminates the need for inline decryption altogether. The result is full visibility into student web traffic and board-approved apps, testing platforms, and digital learning tools that run without latency or crashes.

“Prisma Browser extension runs invisibly in the background without complaint. It helps us deliver a world-class cybersecurity service across our schools without becoming a bottleneck or an obstruction for our students and staff.”

— Bally Kandola

Manager of Networks and Cybersecurity,
DPCDSB

Managing student workarounds with always-on enforcement

A primary requirement for DPCDSB was implementing a security control that students could not bypass or turn off. Alternative endpoint tools failed this test, as students simply toggled Wi-Fi settings to break the enforcement loop. Prisma Browser extension met the challenge by installing automatically via centralized policies the moment a student logs in to their account. This setup guarantees policy enforcement and compliance district-wide.
Streamlining administration and incident response

By consolidating web security in the Palo Alto Networks platform, the DPCDSB network operations team moved from managing multiple consoles to using a single interface. When a school principal reports a new bypass method or inappropriate site, the network team can deploy a counter-control inside Strata Cloud Manager in under five minutes. Furthermore, when conducting investigations, administrators no longer need to pull and manually combine logs from three separate databases; Prisma Browser keeps a 90-day unified log history accessible in a few clicks.

“Before Prisma Browser, our ticket volumes were highly time-consuming and required pulling logs from multiple systems. Now our user complaint volume has dropped significantly, to the point where they have practically disappeared overnight.”

— Christian Goulard

Senior Enterprise Network Architect,
DPCDSB

Threat prevention and safe learning environments

The district leverages the advanced modern web threat protection of Palo Alto Networks to defend the network against evasive threats, such as AI-powered spear phishing attacks. Prisma Browser automatically enforces safe search functionality and blocks malicious domains. DPCDSB has also begun rolling out integrated Advanced WildFire^® malware protection, Enterprise DLP, and threat analysis directly through the browser, providing a stable foundation to safely navigate generative AI applications and shifting digital learning needs.
A lasting partnership for long-term modernization.

The successful integration of Prisma Browser extension supports a long-term technology partnership between DPCDSB and Palo Alto Networks. Having established a stable endpoint posture for students, the district is preparing to execute a migration strategy that includes deploying VM-Series software firewalls in the cloud alongside its existing data center PA-Series hardware firewall . For school districts evaluating similar modernization initiatives, DPCDSB’s experience demonstrates that a platform-centric architecture helps a small team maximize its operational output and scale capabilities effectively.