Bengaluru, NFAPost: Fortinet announced that A K Capital Services Ltd, one of India’s most trusted bond houses, has implemented the Fortinet Security Fabric cybersecurity platform to improve user application experience, enable secure cloud transformation, simplify business operations, reduce cost and manage security with limited skilled resources.
Digital transformation at the organisation led to increased bandwidth requirements and the need for secure access to applications in the cloud. The organization was also dealing with the challenges of providing secure, robust, and cost-effective connectivity to the branch offices.
They also needed a high-performing Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) and better connectivity to securely transfer data from their Data Center to the Disaster Recovery Site as their existing multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) connection was very slow and experiencing a significant amount of downtime.
Adding to this, employees began to work from home because of the pandemic. The end result was a degradation in application availability and performance. Not only did the availability issue negatively impact employee collaboration, but it also hurt customer interactions and business.
A K Group Group Head IT & CISO Amol Jawharkar said Fortinet’s integrated approach to security has eliminated the need to manage the network and security using two different solutions.
“The total cost of ownership has been lowered and the day-to-day security operations has been simplified through a single pane of management. With improved visibility, and response automation we are able to have better control over applications and provide users secure connectivity from anywhere to anywhere. Having a high level of security control across our network along with reduced downtime, is a big enablement factor in our Digital Transformation journey and business expansion plans,” said Amol Jawharkar.
A K Capital deployed the FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls for advance threat protection, including botnet protection, IPS, real time AV and AI-powered cloud sandbox at both the Data Center and the Disaster Recovery Site to achieve high performance while transferring data and help comply with ISO 270001 security compliance standards.
The NGFW provides deep SSL inspection without hindering performance which has helped in not only saving time but also helps meet with the required compliance and provide better security while handling financial data.
For their branches, the shift from MPLS to SD-WAN allows direct access to the internet and requires a different approach to security. A K Capital choose to deploy UTP Security bundles that includes advanced content security with real-time protection thanks to AV and AI-powered cloud Sandbox, as well as a full web security package (web, video, and DNS filtering among others).
This FortiGuard rich suite of security technologies natively integrated with NGFW and SD-WAN offerings, provides consistent policy enforcement and closes the security gaps. Fortinet Secure SD-WAN also enables direct access to cloud & on-premise applications and helps in WAN optimization, automation and traffic shaping. The Secure SD-WAN solution has the ability to intelligently identify applications to determine the best path to be taken as a means to enhance performance, even during brown out or black conditions.
AK Group Senior IT Manager Anil Bhagat said with secure SD-WAN the company is transferring huge volumes of data much faster between Data Center and Disaster Recovery site.
“As administrators we can monitor content and data, identify hosts on which applications are running and identify users. We are also able to identify vulnerabilities and automatically quarantine suspicious hosts. The solution has Automated compliance auditing, which frees up administration resources to work on other critical technology requirements,” said Anil Bhagat.
To secure their cloud applications and provide seamless visibility across the hybrid environment, FortiGate NGFW virtual machines have been deployed in AWS cloud. This helps them to protect their cloud network traffic with features such as high-performance IPSec virtual private network (VPN) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN, as well as Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS), Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), cloud delivered web, video and DNS filtering and anti-malware protection including real-time AV with AI powered Cloud Sandbox.
Moreover, with FortiGate NGFW deployed both on-premises and in the cloud, A K Capital gains the advantage of seamless and simplified operations through consistent security and networking policies across their full deployment. FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer provide simplified management and visibility into the network to manage security with limited skilled professionals. Remote workers connecting to the corporate network from home are identified with FortiToken two-factor authentication.
A single solution provides advance threat protection on premise, in the cloud and secure SD-WAN connectivity with capabilities to hyperscale as their network grows. The seamless integration of cloud security helps them to scale their cloud application requirements to support business growth.
