Pacific Park, the iconic family amusement park on the Santa Monica Pier, shares how Frontline reduced downtime, hardened security, and standardized support across a complex, always-on environment over two years.
Client snapshot
| Company | Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier |
| Industry | Entertainment and hospitality. Family amusement park on the Santa Monica Pier with high-volume POS and payments, surveillance, ride systems, and year-round, seasonal-peak operations. |
| Company size | Dozens of staff across two sites, with hundreds of managed devices |
| Location / Region | Santa Monica managed IT services, CA (greater Los Angeles) |
| Services used | Managed IT services (24/7 monitoring and help desk), Microsoft 365 migration and administration, endpoint management (patching and EDR), cybersecurity (MFA, EDR, vulnerability management, firewalls, and network segmentation), backup and disaster recovery, network and Wi-Fi management, IT projects and virtual CIO strategy |
| Implementation timeline | 30-day onboarding transition beginning spring 2024, with phased modernization across 2024 to 2026 |
| Time-to-value | Support and monitoring stabilized within the first weeks; major security and infrastructure gains within the first 90 days and across the following year |
The challenge
When Pacific Park engaged Frontline in 2024, it had inherited years of patched-together technology for a revenue-critical, always-on amusement park. Email ran on an unsupported on-premise Exchange server, core servers sat on hardware more than a decade past warranty, antivirus was inconsistent, the network had no real monitoring, and backups were failing.
With high-volume payments, surveillance, ride systems, and seasonal crowds, any outage meant lost revenue and frustrated guests, and the park's small team needed a true partner, not a break/fix vendor.
Key obstacles included:
- Unsupported, failure-prone email and end-of-life servers that created single points of failure
- Inconsistent security and no continuous monitoring across a sprawling, multi-site environment
- No standardized support, documentation, or hardware roadmap for a large, multi-site operation
Why Frontline Managed IT Services?
Pacific Park needed a partner who could stabilize day-to-day support and modernize a fragile, mission-critical environment without disrupting operations, all with strict budget discipline. They chose Frontline for its security-first approach, 24/7 monitoring and help desk, proven local Los Angeles track record, and a predictable managed model paired with a clear modernization roadmap rather than one-off fixes.
The solution
Frontline took over Pacific Park's IT end to end. It deployed 24/7 monitoring across the full estate, stood up a responsive help desk with consistent triage and escalation, and standardized endpoint management with automated patching and endpoint detection and response (EDR).
Frontline migrated all staff mailboxes off the failing on-premise Exchange server to Microsoft 365, enforced multi-factor authentication, and added cloud backup for every account, retiring the legacy mail and file servers. It replaced end-of-life servers with current enterprise hardware, consolidated the park's server virtualization, and rebuilt backups.
Enterprise firewalls and network segmentation support payment-card (PCI) security, while continuous vulnerability scanning keeps systems patched. A 2026 project is standardizing the network and Wi-Fi on modern, centrally managed hardware, phased in with pre-staged spares so the park never goes dark. Leadership gets a clear roadmap through ongoing virtual CIO reviews.
Implementation highlights:
- 24/7 monitoring and a managed help desk with consistent triage and escalation
- Microsoft 365 migration with MFA, tenant hardening, and cloud backup; legacy Exchange and file server retired
- Layered security: endpoint detection and response (EDR) with ransomware rollback, DNS filtering, vulnerability management, and enterprise firewalls with network segmentation
Systems supported: cloud email and productivity (Microsoft 365), server virtualization, enterprise firewalls and segmented networking, endpoint detection and response, enterprise backup with off-site copy, point-of-sale and ticketing, surveillance, and VoIP telephony.
Results & impact
Key metrics
| Metric | Before | After | Change | Timeframe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Managed endpoint protection (AV, EDR, DNS filtering) |
~55% (est.) | 100% | +45 pts | By day 90 |
| Ransomware rollback readiness |
0% (est., no EDR) | 99% | +99 pts | By day 90 |
| Suspicious security events handled with zero downtime |
Minimal visibility (est.) |
500+ in 6 months, 0 devices isolated |
SOC-grade coverage |
Ongoing |
| Client satisfaction (support surveys) |
Not measured | 5.0 / 5.0 | 100% positive |
Trailing 12 months |
Before figures marked (est.) are informed estimates of the legacy environment; after figures are drawn from Frontline's management tooling.
Business impact
Beyond the numbers, Pacific Park experienced:
Client testimonial
“Ethan was able to resolve my problem fairly quickly and now I have no issues. Thank you, Ethan!”
- Pacific Park team member, verified Frontline support survey
What's next: the roadmap
Pacific Park will build on the stability Frontline established. Next, it will continue modernizing its network and on-site systems, strengthen resilience, and advance its security maturity through ongoing reviews.
Planned initiatives:
- Continue modernizing the network and Wi-Fi across all sites
- Advance modernization of on-site systems
- Advance security maturity through ongoing documentation, reviews, and business-continuity planning
Key takeaway
Pacific Park's turnaround shows that IT chaos in a complex, always-on venue does not get fixed with one-off repairs. It improves when monitoring, security, and modernization follow a consistent, clearly owned plan. For any high-traffic, revenue-critical business, predictable managed IT lowers downtime and strengthens security without adding internal headcount.
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