Global Electronics Manufacturer Enables Seamless and Secure Remote Working for Key Regional Operation with Fortinet

Customer Perspectives

In a world where remote working is becoming standard business practice, being able to secure remote access to enterprise systems is mission-critical for most organizations. For one global electronics manufacturer, this was proving a challenge. Its installed cloud-based solution was experiencing service issues in one of its most important global operations, and the company realized that the time had come for a refresh.

Security Fit for the Era of Remote Working

The company’s requirements were demanding: a managed security service edge (SSE) that could deliver secure remote access for employees in the region. To ensure the highest levels of security, the company wanted to apply zero-trust network access (ZTNA) principles so that only authorized users could access appropriate data center applications and public-cloud-hosted Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) functions.

In addition, the company wanted to further protect its traffic by using advanced threat protection for file transfers, URL access, and to analyze all of its files. This would be a considerable challenge as its security tools would need to be capable of analyzing up to 10,000 files daily.

Finally, all of this would need to be delivered without adversely impacting the end-user’s experience when working remotely. That required a solution with multiple points of presence (POPs), so traffic could be routed as close as possible to remote workers.

Robust ZTNA from Fortinet

Working through its managed security service provider (MSSP), the company selected Fortinet to deploy an SSE for remote access. Delivered over the MSSP’s cloud, the solution centers on FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) delivered as a virtual machine (VM). Supported by FortiGuard Security Services, the FortiGate VM NGFWs provide industry-leading protection against advanced threats at the network edge.

The company’s ZTNA is enabled by FortiAuthenticator, which enforces identity-driven policies to ensure that only authorized users can access the resources they need to perform their jobs and nothing more. And, FortiClient ZTNA agents tightly integrate on 10,000 endpoints to provide further protection through real-time endpoint visibility and ZTNA tagging for VPN access. The company’s MSSP can centrally manage, monitor, provision, patch, and quarantine user devices through the FortiClient EMS (endpoint management system).

The huge volumes of file analysis required by the company are managed by a combination of FortiSandbox, which identifies and inspects network traffic, files, and URLs for malicious activity, and FortiNDR (network detection and response), which provides network-traffic and file-based analysis, root-cause identification, scope of incidents, and the tools to remediate incidents quickly.

In addition, the company is leveraging FortiAnalyzer for analytics and reporting, and FortiManager for automation-driven centralized management from a single console.

A Secure, High-Performing Solution

Enabled by Fortinet’s solution, the organization now benefits from a highly secure and effective approach to remote access. The antivirus and URL detection capabilities of the FortiGate VM NGFWs, FortiSandbox, and FortiGuard Security Services defend against advanced threats, while Fortinet’s flexible architecture provides full transparency for the organization, giving it confidence that its service-level agreement (SLA) will be met.

Fortinet’s ZTNA solution provides the company assurance that only authorized users can access their systems and, significantly, that they can only access the resources necessary for their work. This approach significantly reduces the risk of lateral movement by threat actors.

Meanwhile, the combination of FortiSandbox and FortiNDR for file analysis has proven hugely beneficial. Using FortiSandbox alone, the sheer volume of files required for analysis, along with the approximately three minutes per file analysis time, led to processing delays. With FortiNDR in place, the queue of files waiting for analysis in the FortiSandbox has been slashed dramatically. Now, all 10,000 URLs and files can be analyzed in just two hours, with FortiNDR offloading 70%‒80% of file analysis from FortiSandbox and processing 2,000 files per hour. Overall, the approach has led to a performance uplift of over 40%.

Working through its MSSP, the solution is available across a cloud infrastructure with multiple POPs, further ensuring performance quality. The MSSP has also saved significant time for the organization by taking care of its security operations center (SOC) functions. As a result, the company is enjoying a highly robust remote working architecture that is simple to manage and delivered with the highest levels of security.

Find out how the Fortinet Security Fabric platform delivers broad, integrated, and automated protection across an organization’s entire digital attack surface to deliver consistent security across all networks, endpoints, and clouds.