industry unlocked
“It’s incredibly helpful to have everything
linked-up. We can manage the devices
and monitor the firewalls all in one place,”
Culver explains. The centralised security
management solution would allow for an
end-to-end consolidated network and
save IT resources both time and money.
A centralised solution was especially
important for long-term planning.
“I don’t know how many firewalls we
expect to have in the coming years. I
expect it to be around 30 to 40. But
knowing that we can manage and deploy
policy from one central location definitely
helps,” says Culver.
The ability to configure VDOM within the
FortiGate enterprise firewalls also meant
his team could easily grant individual
departments and colleges permission
to access parts of the firewall, while
keeping the more important elements
private. Local IT teams could view and
manage their own firewalls, granting
them flexibility and control. Culver and
his team started implementing Fortinet
solutions at Cambridge University in
March 2017.
46
It’s a slow process, he admits, but one
that is steadily moving along:
“Each time we go out and meet a
department or college we talk about
their network, discuss their infrastructure
and find out what security rules they’d
like. From there, we start planning and
deploying,” he said.
Cambridge
University ran an
extensive market
and competition
evaluation before
choosing Fortinet
as its chosen
security provider
for the future.
“It’s a service that takes a couple of
months to arrange. Especially if there’s
an existing network or firewall, as we
need to transfer the security over.”
The main gateway firewalls are now
in-situ