PDQ wins Texas school cybersecurity deployment deal

PDQ has been selected to provide software deployment tools for the Texas K-12 Cybersecurity Initiative, which is administered by the Technology Alliance for Statewide Initiatives.

Under the agreement, PDQ's Premium tier will be available at no cost to participating Texas school districts, with funding provided through the statewide initiative. TASI selected PDQ through a competitive process.

The rollout is intended to give school systems across Texas a way to deploy software, patch vulnerabilities, remove local administrator access, and strengthen endpoint security. The service will cover Windows and macOS devices and support the deployment of endpoint detection and response agents alongside existing tools.

TASI administers the initiative through ESC Region 13 on behalf of Texas's 20 Education Service Centres. Districts interested in joining are being directed to their regional Education Service Centre for enrolment details and local administrative steps.

For Texas school systems, the agreement extends a cybersecurity programme to a broad mix of districts, from large urban systems to smaller rural ones. It is designed to address a long-standing challenge in K-12 technology operations: many districts have limited internal IT resources but still need to manage software updates and protect school networks from cyber threats.

PDQ already works with more than 186 K-12 customers in Texas across all 20 Education Service Centre regions. Those customers include Brownsville ISD, one of the state's larger urban districts, and Eden CISD, a smaller rural district in ESC Region 15.

Onboarding will take place in phases, beginning on October 1 and continuing through 2027 and beyond. Districts will not all come on at once, but will be added over time through the existing regional support structure.

Statewide reach

The initiative gives participating districts access to endpoint management functions that are often handled through separate products or manual processes. In practice, district IT teams will be able to use the software to distribute applications, apply patches, manage vulnerabilities, and control local administrator rights on school devices.

That matters because endpoint management has become a central part of cybersecurity in education, where schools must maintain large numbers of staff and student devices while working within constrained budgets. Offering the software at no cost removes a procurement hurdle that can slow adoption, particularly for smaller systems.

Jaren Nichols, president of PDQ, framed the arrangement as a way to widen access to tools for districts with stretched resources.

"We're proud to bring PDQ's endpoint management experience to every school system in Texas willing to take part in this program," said Jaren Nichols, president of PDQ.

"Districts across the state, many of them running lean one-person IT shops, will get enterprise-grade tools without a procurement barrier or a bill," Nichols said.

Lea Castillo, director of TASI, said the programme was designed to make cybersecurity support available regardless of district size.

"The state of Texas is committed to making sure every school system in Texas, regardless of size or resources, has access to real cybersecurity protection," said Lea Castillo, director of TASI.

"This partnership with PDQ gives districts a straightforward way to strengthen their defenses at no cost to them," Castillo said.

Existing base

PDQ, based in Salt Lake City, serves more than 33,000 customers overall. The company has built its business around endpoint management tools used by system administrators, managed service providers, and internal IT teams for patching, software deployment, and vulnerability management.

Its selection for the Texas K-12 programme suggests public sector buyers continue to focus on basic cyber hygiene measures such as patch management and access control, rather than relying only on detection software. In school environments, where ageing devices, distributed users, and small IT teams are common, those operational controls can be difficult to apply consistently without centralised tools.

Texas is one of the largest K-12 markets in the US, so a statewide arrangement gives PDQ a wider foothold in education while giving districts a common framework for managing endpoints. The programme also reflects the growing use of state-level initiatives to provide shared security resources to local education systems that may not be able to negotiate or fund equivalent tools on their own.

Through the initiative, participating district IT teams will be able to use PDQ across Windows and macOS endpoints for software deployment, patching, vulnerability management, local administrator removal, and EDR agent deployment at scale.