Customer Perspectives

A leading medical products and technologies company, which provides solutions for managing chronic conditions in nearly 100 countries, was struggling with its security service edge (SSE) solution. The business has remote users worldwide and greatly emphasizes enabling those workers to connect to its cloud-based resources securely.

While the company had been using the same SSE solution for more than three years, providing zero-trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG), and firewall capabilities in the cloud, it was lacking in some key areas.

For example, the company needed its cloud security solution to provide bidirectional connectivity to push policies from its domain controller and troubleshoot remote devices. Unfortunately, its legacy SSE solution only enabled monodirectional traffic flows. As a result, some of the systems its remote workers relied on to do their jobs, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and peer-to-peer applications, required a combination of SSE and a VPN to achieve bidirectional flows. This significantly increased the cost and complexity of cloud security management for the medical device provider.

In addition to the limitations inherent in its SSE solution, the company's legacy provider continued to raise renewal costs, especially for some of the add-on features that the company required. The price of the SSE solution was becoming challenging for the medical equipment company to bear.

Fortinet Introduces Robust SSE and SD-WAN with Centralized Management

The organization realized that a secure access service edge (SASE) platform would support the required bidirectional traffic flows. SASE combines SSE capabilities with software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) networking to provide a dynamic remote workforce with secure access to cloud-based resources.

When the medical device company reviewed its options, Fortinet emerged as a frontrunner for replacing its legacy solution. FortiSASE combines a robust SSE solution with SD-WAN connectivity, including ZTNA, SWG, Firewall-as-a-Service, and an API-based cloud access security broker. This combination of functionalities enables bidirectional traffic, ensuring secure, always-on access to private applications, including VoIP and peer-to-peer solutions.

Another key benefit of the Fortinet cloud security infrastructure was the single-pane-of-glass management available through FortiManager, which consolidates information from on-premises and cloud-based security tools. The ability to manage all its security systems through a single platform aligned perfectly with the medical device company's vision of simplified and consistent security management.

Tighter Security, Operational Efficiency, and $50,000 Savings Every Year

The company rolled out FortiSASE for a three-month proof of concept (POC). Fortinet demonstrated that its SASE platform could provide secure remote access with support for all the functionality the medical equipment organization needed. The Fortinet team also demonstrated the SD-WAN on-ramp capabilities of its SD-WAN Connector. For remote users in China, the medical device company deployed a FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall virtual machine (VM) on its Microsoft Azure China cloud, utilizing its existing transport mechanism between China and the international internet to route traffic securely.

After the successful POC, the company transitioned its remote workforce to FortiSASE. It then engaged FortiCare Professional Services for assistance in designing and deploying the FortiSASE environment to 7,000 users.

The company looks forward to enhancing its security posture by extending the FortiSASE bidirectional functionality and pre-logon VPN with machine certificates to all remote users. Thanks to FortiManager single-pane-of-glass security management, it plans to reap significant benefits from the operational efficiencies it will achieve.

Even as FortiSASE tightens up security for thousands of remote workers globally, it will save the medical device company approximately $50,000 annually compared to its legacy SSE solution.

Perhaps most importantly, in the long term, the company has developed a partnership with the Fortinet team built on trust. As it begins to roll out its new approach to cloud-based security, this medical device provider is confident that Fortinet's commitment to innovation means FortiSASE is a future-proof solution that will continue to adapt to the company's evolving security needs.

As a result, the company will be able to continue to effectively and efficiently provide quality healthcare solutions that save the lives of patients worldwide.

Learn more about how FortiSASE enhances cloud security while streamlining security management.

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