Customer Perspectives

The global banking sector is more competitive than ever. Traditional, incumbent institutions must battle with digital upstarts and fintech innovators to win market share. That means their services and customer experiences must be better than ever. As a result, network performance has become a key criterion of success.

When Poor Performance Meets Rising Costs

It was clear to one major bank that its network was no longer keeping up. Its 5,000+ branches were connected in a wide area network (WAN) leveraging two multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) lines in each branch in active standby mode and linked using outdated routers. Where speed, agility, and performance were needed, the bank instead experienced slow connections and poor network uptime. In addition, the 15-strong team that provided around-the-clock network management found the system overly complex and was required to intervene manually far too often. The cost of the WAN was also an issue as it continued to rise year over year.   

Refreshing the Network on the Fortinet Security Fabric

Having launched a search for a new partner to help with its network refresh, the bank invited Fortinet to provide a proof of concept (POC) solution. Fortinet successfully demonstrated that Fortinet Secure SD-WAN (software-defined wide area network) could solve the bank's networking challenges and would interoperate seamlessly with its existing network infrastructure.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN is part of Fortinet's secure networking portfolio and integrates seamlessly with the Fortinet Security Fabric, a broad, integrated, and automated cybersecurity platform. The POC illustrated to the bank how Fortinet Secure SD-WAN delivers better application uptime, steering, quality of service (QoS), and centralized management than its legacy WAN solution. 

The bank had further enhanced its network and security management capabilities by using FortiManager (Fortinet's unified management console) for centralized policy-based provisioning, device configuration, and update management, as well as FortiAnalyzer (Fortinet's centralized logging and analysis offering) for log management, analytics, and reporting.

In addition to Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, the bank has also deployed two FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services: Unified Threat Protection (UTP) and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). These services protect the bank from advanced cyberattacks and malware that aim to exfiltrate, corrupt, or steal sensitive data.

The bank is also using FortiCare Premium Support and Professional Services for ongoing support. This includes access to a Technical Account Manager, who facilitates overall service delivery and ensures timely responses through a focused communication channel.

A Sustainable Network Architecture

With Fortinet Secure SD-WAN in place, the bank has been able to banish the spiraling costs associated with its legacy WAN. Fortinet's solution removes the need for bandwidth-based licensing and comes with no additional or recurring SD-WAN costs, providing the bank with a network that is sustainable from a financial perspective and delivers a great return on investment.

The solution also meets the bank's need for simplified network management capabilities, effectively eliminating the challenges the organization faced with day-to-day network management through improved application visibility and uptime. Faster hardware delivery from Fortinet, compared to competitors, also allowed the bank to quickly replace legacy.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has also greatly enhanced the performance of the network. The bank can now use both its MPLS links in each branch simultaneously, steer critical traffic through the best links to improve the user experience, and benefit from a seamless failover in case of issues-a capability lacking in its previous solution. Importantly, given that banks are often targeted by hackers, the organization is also benefiting from a more secure network courtesy of FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services.

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN has helped this leading bank meet digital acceleration goals across all edges on lower-cost public WAN links. More scalable, resilient, and secure, the updated network will help the bank deliver against increasing customer expectations and help it compete in an increasingly crowded sector.

Take a secure networking approach to improve user experience and simplify operations at the WAN edge with Fortinet Secure SD-WAN.