Customer Perspectives

From critical infrastructure to election administration to driver’s license/identification services and more, local governments are responsible for providing a number of vital services that affect the daily lives of citizens. Because of this, local governments are increasingly becoming a target for cybercriminals like nation-state actors or hacktivists looking to make a political statement, or malicious actors looking to steal personal data to sell or hold for ransom. 

As a result, it is more important than ever for local governments to adopt comprehensive, integrated security solutions that enable Security-Driven Networking and protect networks from sophisticated cyber threats.

Local Government Launches Project to Transform Entire Security Infrastructure

One local government in the United States with over 200,000 residents recognized this and set out to transform its security infrastructure by launching a project with the following objectives: 

• Cyber risk mitigation – Because of the critical role local governments play in the daily lives of citizens, a solution that mitigates cyber risk without disrupting network performance was necessary.
• Simplify operations – The cybersecurity skills gap affects organizations across sectors worldwide, and the U.S. public sector is no different. With a lack of skilled IT professionals and limited budget, this city required integrated solutions that could simplify security operations.
• Improve visibility – With complete visibility over the network, this local government could ensure secure operations and rapidly address potential cyber threats. 
• Control access across entire network infrastructure – Centralized management and the ability to control access across the entire digital infrastructure would enable this local government to give employees access to only the resources they needed to accomplish the task at hand, reducing the risk of cyber threats to sensitive data and information.
• Seamlessly migrate to a hybrid cloud environment – Though this government was not ready to begin its transition to a hybrid cloud environment immediately, it was critical that a plan to address cloud migration was included in their infrastructure refresh as part of phase two.

The Fortinet Security Fabric Provides Complete Protection to Enable Digital Innovation

Fortinet’s broad, integrated and automated Security Fabric is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform built to enable digital innovation while reducing complexity and cyber risk. With an expansive portfolio of products and an extensive ecosystem of seamless third-party integrations, the Fortinet Security Fabric provides customers with: 

• Broad visibility over their entire digital attack surface
• An integrated security architecture to enable consistent configuration, policy management, and effortless, real-time communication across the network infrastructure
• Automated operations, orchestration, and response to reduce complexity and increase visibility and control

Local Government Implements Fortinet Security Fabric

This local government found that the core benefits of the Security Fabric aligned perfectly with the requirements for its security infrastructure refresh. Because of this, Fortinet began a series of Proof of Concepts (PoCs) to demonstrate the functionality of different elements of the Fabric. 

During these PoCs, Fortinet was able to show this local government that its Security Fabric could provide complete protection from data center to home to branch to multi-cloud. Some of the key pieces of the Security Fabric that were instrumental in their decision to adopt Fortinet solutions included: 

• FortiGate Next Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) – Powered by purpose-built security processing units (SPUs), FortiGate NGFWs enable this city to protect any network edge at any scale, without degrading network performance.
• FortiNAC– By leveraging FortiNAC, this city could gain visibility, control, and automated response for everything that connects to the network, speeding response times to cybersecurity events and providing an additional layer of security for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. 
• Fabric Management Center – The Fabric Management Center streamlines and simplifies network operations by providing centralized management through a single console.
• Dynamic Cloud Security Solutions – With products like the FortiGate VM, FortiWeb Cloud, FortiCWP, and FortiMail Cloud, this city is well equipped to begin its transition to a hybrid cloud environment and can have the confidence to securely deploy any application on any cloud infrastructure. 
• FortiGuard Subscription Services – FortiGuard Security Services can help stop threats in real time, eliminate attacks from common entry points, proactively prevent and detect breaches, and secure the expanding attack surface. 
• Fortinet Professional Services – With these services, this local government can gain technical consulting for Fortinet solutions to ensure that mission-critical operations remain uninterrupted. These services also complement the city’s FortiCare Subscription service, providing health checks and audit preparation to ensure Fortinet investments are maximized in performance and value.
• Fortinet NSE Training Institute – With access to the Fortinet NSE Training Institute’s Certification Program, this local government can provide its security staff with advanced security training on Fortinet products. And with Fortinet’s new Information Security Awareness and Training service, this local government could also provide all its employees with free cybersecurity awareness training to reduce the risk of insider threats. 

With the Fortinet Security Fabric, this local government was able to address each of the original requirements for its security infrastructure refresh, ultimately gaining more visibility and control over the network, mitigating the risk of cyber threats, simplifying operations, and enabling a secure and simple migration to a hybrid cloud environment.