Spice Telecom deploys Fortinet soln for network security

BANGALORE:

Fortinet has announced that Spice Telecom, one of India's leading mobile

telecommunications providers, has deployed its FortiGate-300A Unified Threat

Management (UTM) system as the cornerstone of its network security

infrastructure. Launched nine years ago as a cellular phone service operator,

Spice Telecom currently serves 1.5 million subscribers in the Punjab and

Karnataka regions with wide coverage in urban areas and road networks.

Spice

Telecom's IT department was continuously challenged with trying to manage and

maintain a large assortment of point security products from numerous vendors.

This challenge was compounded every time a computer was added to the network. As

Spice Telecom's network grew, the IT department found it increasingly

difficult to keep virus and spam signatures up-to-date and to effectively

enforce security policies.

Spice

Telecom recognized the need for a comprehensive, streamlined network security

solution to meet its critical and diverse security requirements. IT

administrators were eager for a solution that would be easy to manage, grow with

the network as necessary and ensure up-to-the-minute security updates to virus

and spam signatures. The company was also seeking a solution that would support

High Availability (HA) and Load Balancing operations to eliminate any

possibility of a single point of failure. After evaluating solutions from

several vendors, Spice Telecom purchased and deployed two FortiGate-300A systems

in a HA configuration to provide comprehensive, non-stop multi-threat security.

The

deployment of the FortiGate-300A platforms has resulted in dramatic improvements

in the integrity and flexibility of Spice Telecom's network security

infrastructure and a marked increase in IT staff efficiency.Â

The ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems provide a full suite of network

security capabilities -- including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention

systems (IPS), VPN, Web filtering, anti-spam, and traffic shaping — to protect

against content and blended threats in real-time.Â

Tests performed on the FortiGate-300A systems by Spice Telecom indicated

that scanning of inbound and outbound traffic achieved throughputs in excess of

300 MBPS, highlighting Fortinet's excellent performance.Â

According

to Navin Kaul, COO - Spice Telecom Karnataka, Fortinet's robust capabilities

and ease-of-use made it the clear choice for network security: “Fortinet's

unified threat management systems provided us the best functional range of

security applications and services, most of which are ICSA certified, and

offered the best total cost of ownership.  Additionally,

we liked the high-performance the systems delivered, made possible by ASIC-based

hardware acceleration."

The

FortiGate-300A systems provide the performance, flexibility, and security

necessary to protect enterprise networks. They feature two 10/100/1000 tri-speed

Ethernet ports for networks running at or upgrading to gigabit speeds.Â

Four user-definable 10/100 ports can be assigned to provide redundant WAN

links, high availability, and multi-zone capabilities, allowing administrators

to segment their network into zones and create policies to control network

traffic between zones. Like all FortiGate systems, the FortiGate-300A systems

are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard Network, which

provides continuous updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses,

worms, Trojans, and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

Navin

Kaul continued, “With

Fortinet's UTM systems in place, we've reduced our administration

complexities and management headaches, as well as improved the robustness of our

network security.  Additionally, we

no longer have to worry about a single-point of failure in our network, which

was previously our only gateway to the Internet.Â

The other real plus we've experienced with Fortinet is the fact that we

only bear a one-time acquisition cost versus the huge annual maintenance and

licensing costs for other solutions. Overall, this has been an exceptional value

proposition for us.”

”Reducing

network complexity and maximizing availability is a key concern for

telecommunications companies,” said Hansen Chang, vice president, Asia

Pacific, Fortinet. “The integrated security and management that our FortiGate

systems provide enabled Spice Telecom to enhance network security and reduce

complexity without compromising performance -- a perfect example of the

effectiveness of UTM and the value of Fortinet systems.”

“Spice

was keen to quickly migrate to a next generation perimeter level security

infrastructure that would offer complete protection against content based

blended attacks," commented M. Prabhakar Kini, Managing Director of

Kinfotech, a leading security solutions integrator and a premier Fortinet

Partner. "After a thorough review of Spice Telecom's security

infrastructure services requirement, we felt that Fortinet's ASIC based UTM

solution would serve the company's requirements perfectly.”