Fortinet partners with BT to expand its managed network services with Secure SD-WAN

SD-WAN allows organizations of all sizes to improve application and user experience while enabling the flexibility and cost benefits of a hybrid network. However, the network transformation made possible by SD-WAN leads to a wider attack surface, meaning traditional perimeter-based security is insufficient. Organizations that have chosen to solve this issue by overlaying security as an afterthought are realizing they have introduced unnecessary cost, complexity, and cyber risk into their network.

With the scale, pace and variety of cyberthreats continuing to grow at an alarming rate, BT will be enhancing its Managed Firewall service with the addition of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, providing multi-national organizations with a solution that fully combines security and connectivity in a single appliance. BT experts support customers at every stage of deployment and operation, from initial set-up and roll-out through ongoing monitoring, management and enhancement.

BT provides a consistent level of service for organizations’ differing digital maturity, infrastructures and business needs. With all functions managed as a single entity, it allows customers to simply add devices and infrastructure to their network, giving them flexibility and agility to respond to market changes and growth. Through continuing threat assessment and detection, BT can also support customers by identifying and preventing attacks, and mitigate damages should a breach occur.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN provides a number of clear benefits, including:

Improved Performance and Experience: Can be configured to prioritize business-critical traffic and real-time services for optimized network and application performance, while also accelerating the adoption and integration of cloud services.

Efficient Operations: Customers can manage all sites, troubleshoot and enable Secure SD-WAN to new and existing branches easily using a single-pane-of-glass interface.

Natively Integrated Security: Combines SD-WAN and security capabilities in a unified solution to preserve the security and availability of the network.

Reduced Costs and Improved ROI: By deploying a single integrated security and network WAN Edge solution which enables accelerated convergence, customers benefit from both reduced costs and improved return on investment.

BT and Fortinet have worked as partners for over a decade to develop and deliver solutions for organizations looking to secure their network transformation. With many organizations continuing to adapt to a distributed and remote workforce model, BT and Fortinet work collaboratively to provide customers with secure access to applications and workloads, while extending zero trust controls from their network to the Cloud Edge via SASE.

Supporting Quotes

“Our new managed secure SD-WAN service with Fortinet increases our customers’ choice of secure and reliable connectivity solutions to support their digital transformation. It combines Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN approach with our leading global security and networking capabilities, offering customers the ability to de-risk their digital transformation investments and create outstanding end-user experiences. It underscores BT and Fortinet’s commitment to enabling secure connectivity for today’s global organizations with distributed employees and hybrid, digital workstyles.”

- Kevin Brown, Managing Director, BT Security

“Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is one of many examples of Fortinet’s commitment to developing innovative solutions that converge networking and security. Fortinet’s security-driven networking approach from the WAN edge to the cloud edge via SASE is trusted by service providers globally. We are pleased to continue our long-standing partnership with BT to enable global customers to securely access applications and workloads from anywhere.”

- John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet