For greater than 50 years, Huitt‑Zollars has formed the infrastructure Individuals depend on day-after-day—from iconic Dallas bridges to main transit methods, navy installations, theme parks and the important water, transportation and civic amenities that maintain communities shifting.
As a multidisciplinary structure and engineering agency with practically 25 places of work nationwide and roughly 600 worker‑house owners, their legacy is constructed on a uncommon mixture of technical excellence, creativity and a deeply held perception in serving the general public with integrity.
However at the moment, designing the bodily world more and more will depend on mastering the digital one. With large information recordsdata, cross-country groups, protection‑associated safety necessities and an ever‑evolving risk panorama, Huitt‑Zollars wanted a contemporary, safe, extremely dependable community spine. In addition they wanted a trusted expertise companion who understood each the complexity of their mission and the urgency of supporting it.
For greater than three many years, Lumen has been that companion—and collectively, they’ve remodeled Huitt‑Zollars’ connectivity, collaboration, cybersecurity and operational resilience for the following 50 years and past.
A enterprise constructed on collaboration meets the calls for of a digital world
Huitt‑Zollars’ work spans seven main follow areas: transportation, public works, federal amenities, city growth, industrial, institutional and industrial. Many tasks require distributed groups of planners, architects, engineers, surveyors, subject crews, undertaking managers and exterior stakeholders throughout states to collaborate in actual time.
The agency’s information footprint is staggering. Evaluating the scale of at the moment’s undertaking recordsdata to the early days of digital design, Huitt-Zollars’ VP of Info Know-how, Glen Ridnour, notes, “Our first main transit undertaking saved 2.5 GB of information—as soon as an enormous quantity. Nevertheless at the moment, the agency manages over 300 terabytes of energetic recordsdata, fashions and renderings.”
Bandwidth, pace and low‑latency connectivity aren’t conveniences. They’re mission‑vital. In the meantime, safety necessities have intensified, particularly for federal work ruled by CMMC and different stringent compliance frameworks. As cyberattacks develop in frequency and class, Huitt‑Zollars wanted fashionable safety with out hiring a 24/7 in‑home safety crew.
Why Huitt‑Zollars selected Lumen
Huitt‑Zollars’ partnership with Lumen dates again many years, persevering with throughout a number of generations of expertise. The agency has lengthy valued the experience, customer support and reliability that Lumen supplies, and not too long ago served as a buyer reference for Gartner analysis due to their sturdy expertise.
“It’s an extended‑time partnership that continues to evolve. Glen has all the time been an advocate for us, and in flip, we need to be an equal companion not solely to him in return, however to their whole enterprise,” stated Erick Gaston, Lumen Account Supervisor, who oversees the Huitt-Zollars account.
When Huitt‑Zollars dedicated to modernizing its infrastructure, Lumen turned the pure companion to information them ahead—not simply with level options, however with a holistic technique.
Constructing a contemporary, safe, excessive‑efficiency community
Right now, Huitt‑Zollars depends on an built-in ecosystem of Lumen connectivity and safety companies, together with:
- Devoted Web Entry (DIA) throughout all places of work
- Enterprise Broadband for secondary, numerous‑path redundancy
- Fortinet SASE, absolutely managed by Lumen
- VSOC (Digital Safety Operations Middle)
- Managed SIEM
- Cyber Incident Response Providers
- CMMC Compliance Consulting
- Assault Floor Administration (in deployment)
This mix permits Huitt‑Zollars to function like a digitally native group whereas sustaining the rigor required of a federal contractor.
“The partnership with Lumen has been instrumental in serving to us safe our networks and our information—with out having to construct a 24/7 safety crew internally,” Ridnour shared. “There may be completely no approach we might run spherical‑the‑clock monitoring with our 10‑particular person IT division and nearly 600 customers.”
A turning level: Navigating CMMC and safety modernization
Some of the impactful phases of the partnership centered on navigating the complicated CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Mannequin Certification) panorama—a difficult requirement for corporations doing Division of Protection‑associated work.
Huitt‑Zollars confronted points widespread to many organizations:
- Sustaining safe workflows throughout distributed groups
- Lack of inner bandwidth to handle compliance documentation
- Problem defining scope and choosing a compliant enclave
- Speedy progress in cyberthreats
- Growing stress from insurers and purchasers round audit readiness
The consulting crew at Lumen helped Huitt‑Zollars by a multi‑yr transformation that included assessing their surroundings, choosing a safe enclave supplier (Summit 7), aligning operational processes and implementing extra protections like Managed SIEM and VSOC.
“They didn’t know what they didn’t know—and we had been in a position to information them from begin to end,” stated Edward Raibick, Lumen Safety Program Supervisor.
This work not solely strengthened Huitt‑Zollars’ safety posture, but additionally gave their management confidence that the corporate might proceed serving delicate federal applications with out disruption.
Trying forward: Assault floor administration & AI‑pushed workflows
With its DIA, Fortinet SASE, VSOC and CMMC frameworks in place, Huitt‑Zollars is now getting ready for the following frontier: proactive Assault Floor Administration (ASM). It will assist the agency robotically detect vulnerabilities, prioritize dangers and measure safety maturity over time.
“ASM will information us in figuring out the place to focus our efforts and assets—giving us clearer metrics for safety enhancements,” Ridnour defined.
AI can be poised to play a transformative position. Huitt‑Zollars is already utilizing AI‑enabled instruments for proposal growth and content material search, they usually envision expanded use in:
- Visualizing different design ideas
- Accelerating engineering calculations
- Bettering cross‑undertaking information discovery
- Enhancing modeling accuracy
- Unlocking insights from many years of undertaking information
As Ridnour put it: “AI is ineffective with out excessive‑high quality information and a safe, dependable community to ship it.”
And that’s precisely what Lumen has helped them construct.
To study extra about Huitt-Zollars’ transformation, learn the total buyer success story.
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