Fortinet - Use cases for the Fortinet Fabric Management Center

IT organisations use manageability as a key criterion when selecting security infrastructure. This means that the larger an IT network is, the more important management efficiency becomes. The Fortinet Fabric Management Center, which combines the FortiManager network management solution and the FortiAnalyzer analytics and protocol management solution, streamlines the deployment and management of even the largest security infrastructure.

Ensure operational efficiency at any scale

GPS Hospitality's experience is a case in point. The company owns nearly 500 quick-service restaurants in 11 US states - a size it achieved in just seven years through acquisitions. To ensure operational efficiency as it scaled, GPS Hospitality standardised the IT environment across all of its restaurants and engaged IT services provider HonorBuilt for IT deployment and support.

GPS Hospitality chose Fortinet solutions to secure its geographically dispersed restaurants, in large part due to its Fabric Management Centre. Today, each of the company's restaurants has two FortiSwitch devices, a FortiGate next-generation firewall (NGFW), two FortiAP access points and a FortiMail secure email gateway. HonorBuilt manages all of these solutions across the entire restaurant estate through a single management platform.

"For us as a service provider, the global management is the biggest advantage of the Fortinet solutions," says Andy Patterson, Senior Technology Consultant at HonorBuilt. Before we deployed the FortiManager solution, we had no way to push global updates," says Andy Patterson, Senior Technology Consultant at HonorBuilt. Now we can do this in minutes across all 486 GPS hospitality locations," said Andy Patterson, Senior Technical Consultant at HonorBuilt. HonorBuilt also uses FortiAnalyzer to gain insight into security events across the GPS Hospitality infrastructure.

Just as important as the efficiency of day-to-day management is the ease with which Fortinet solutions can be deployed in new locations. Jim Barlow, GPS Hospitality's IT Director, says that opening a new restaurant through the Fabric Management Centre "almost looks like a cookie-cutter". Thanks to this simple implementation, GPS Hospitality has seen growth of more than 1,000% in its first seven years.

"Our partnership with HonorBuilt and the use of Fortinet solutions makes it very easy for us to leave the same footprint in every restaurant," Barlow concludes. "When the technology platform is as standardised as ours, a business can grow very quickly."

Visibility and scalability in preparation for the future

Batteries Plus Bulbs has a similar story to tell. The company's managed security service provider (MSSP), Leeward Business Advisors, is responsible for the company's Security Operations Centre and Network Operations Centre, as well as security, network connectivity and wireless access at each of Batteries Plus Bulbs' 740 shops.

The FortiGate NGFWs secure traffic in each shop and provide secure, software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) connectivity. FortiAP wireless access points provide wireless access in every shop, and the FortiGate Unified Threat Management (UTM) package provides Batteries Plus Bulbs access to advanced malware protection, web filtering, intrusion prevention system (IPS) and application control. All of these solutions are based on threat intelligence from FortiGuard Labs and third-party vendors within the Fortinet Security Fabric.

LeewardBA and Batteries Plus Bulbs staff use the Fabric Management Centre to monitor all these solutions. FortiManager VM and FortiAnalyzer "allow us to provide centralised management from a single pane of glass, detailed reporting, workflow automation and trend analysis," said Jason Klein, LeewardBA's chief technology officer (CTO). "This allows the internal team to get a complete picture of their security posture at a glance at any time.

This level of visibility is a significant improvement over the company's old security environment provided by another MSSP and solution provider. "With our previous solution, we were often in the dark," says Michael Lehman, Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Batteries Plus Bulbs. "Our previous MSSP did not provide us with actionable insights into what risks we were exposed to or what we could do about them.

Dan Dugan, Vice President of IT at Batteries Plus Bulbs, summarises the benefits of the Fabric Management Centre: "Now we have security information by looking at a screen, and we can drill down to any level of detail we want. We can take a more proactive stance in managing security. This gives us confidence that we are equipped to deal with security threats for the next five to seven years."

Financial services audits made easy

The Illinois State Treasurer doesn't have as many different locations as GPS Hospitality or Batteries Plus Bulbs, but as the state's banking agency, it manages $32 billion in assets. Effective security is essential - and to provide effective security, the agency's small IT staff needs operational efficiency. That's one of the main reasons the Treasurer's office turned to Fortinet.

The authority deployed FortiGate NGFWs and the FortiSandbox sandbox solution to protect its infrastructure. The Fortinet Fabric Management Centre consolidates network-wide threat detection and response information, which is essential for securing sensitive data such as account or routing numbers and connections to external financial institutions. "This central management platform makes security management much easier," says Joseph Daniels, CIO of the Illinois State Treasurer's Office.

To comply with a recent information security audit, Daniels drew on the agency's weekly FortiGate cloud security reports, which provided him with enough information to meet the audit requirements. Since then, the authority has deployed FortiAnalyzer analysis, which Daniels says "provides a much deeper insight into our network." ... I'm looking forward to the next audit we have. We will be much better prepared," says Daniels.

The bottom line for automated network operations

From government agencies to retail businesses, efficiency is a critical component of IT security infrastructure. Many companies are facing a resource crunch. Even large organisations may not have large security teams as skills are scarce in most labour markets.

Automation, centralisation and other efficiency drivers in infrastructure management are helping network and security teams of all sizes to effectively secure critical resources, potentially across hundreds (or even thousands) of distributed sites. FortiGate NGFWs achieve this level of manageability due to the visibility provided by a single management platform in the Fortinet Fabric Management Center.

If you are interested in a Fortinet security solution, please feel free to contact us for a consultation or trial via phone, email or our contact form.