Industry
Banking & Financial Services
Number of Devices
500-700
Solution
Portnox Cloud
RADIUS
At-a-glance
Industry
Locations
Devices
Services Implemented
Driver
Company Background
PFCU, headquartered in Portland, Michigan, operates 14 branches serving members across both urban and rural areas, statewide.
With a hybrid network built on Meraki switches, Ubiquiti Unifi wireless, and a mix of on-premises and cloud systems, PFCU’s IT team supports between 500 and 700 devices across locations.
Like most credit unions, PFCU faces strict compliance requirements and must protect sensitive member data while ensuring smooth branch operations. Since they have a wide variety of members and partners visiting their many locations, ensuring guest connectivity with security is also important.
The Challenge
PFCU decided to implement a Network Access Control (NAC) solution for three reasons: to meet auditor requirements, to make their company more secure, and to ensure protection of their members’ information and data. Ben Jarbeau, PFCU’s Cybersecurity Engineer, was tasked with bringing NAC to a distributed networking environment that did not previously have this level of security —the company was new to NAC solutions.
Ben and his team knew that without NAC, any visitor could plug in a rogue device or attempt Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attacks, leaving branches exposed. Prior to working with Portnox, these were real vulnerabilities that they wanted to avoid.
Why Portnox
What sealed the deal:
Reliability and Resilience
Simplicity and Scalability
Instant Policy Enforcement
Peer-Validated Trust
Real-World Tested
Implementation
The Portnox Cloud NAC rollout was fast and smooth. Although this is the first time their team have implemented a NAC solution and their IT team is very small, they found it to be easier than expected. Ben was able to do about 90% of the implementation prep and work on his own, with system admins assisting toward the end of the process.
What it entailed:
- AgentP deployment: Easily installed on all managed endpoints.
- MAB for unmanaged devices: Ensured printers, phones, and IoT devices connected securely.
- Elite support: Portnox engineers provided hands-on onboarding and registry key optimization.
- Wi-Fi integration: Unified wireless authentication across branches, allowing employees to automatically connect to any branch’s network.
- SIEM integration: Connected Portnox logs to Rapid7 for centralized monitoring.
The Results
- Compliance achieved: Passed auditor NAC requirement .
- Zero rogue device risk: Unauthorized devices can’t connect in branches.
- Faster operations: Cloud-based policy changes apply in under a minute.
- Improved user experience: Staff automatically connect to branch Wi-Fi without passwords.
- Better network visibility: NAC logs flow into Rapid7 SIEM for threat monitoring.
Unexpected Wins
- Seamless Wi-Fi roaming: Employees can walk into any of PFCU’s 14 total locations and instantly connect—no more “What’s the password?” moments, or sticky notes with credentials in prominent places.
- Cloud speed: Unlike many cloud tools that take 10–20 minutes to push changes, Portnox delivers within seconds.