Fortinet to secure Muthoot's network

Fortinet announced that Muthoot Fincorp has deployed its FortiGate network security platform, FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer centralized management and reporting appliances to secure its datacenter and network of over 3,800 branches. Muthoot Fincorp chose Fortinet over competing vendors like Juniper, Cisco and DAX because of performance, security features and management of its solutions.

Muthoot Fincorp is registered with the Reserve Bank of India. Its finance options and investment products serve customers who are unable to access mainstream commercial banks. The institution serves an average of 40,000 customers across the country.

Prior to the Fortinet deployment, Muthoot Fincorp's branches were linked to its head office over unsecured broadband connections. The company wanted to upgrade its IT infrastructure to provide secure and fail-proof connectivity to its branches, many of which are located in tier II and III cities and remote villages.

Fortinet's solutions has next-generation firewall (NGFW) features offering perimeter security to branch networks; automatic failover dialup to secondary (broadband) and tertiary (datacard) links on an as-needed basis; VOIP, Web/URL filtering, branch video surveillance; centralized device configuration and management; and support for datacards of service providers.

"Our experience with Fortinet's solutions and support has been very reassuring," said Krishnan Neelakantan, CIO at Muthoot Fincorp. "The deployment is not yet complete but we are already seeing clear ROI from reduced phone bills due to VoIP use, reduced bandwidth cost on datacards, reduced server and PC downtime in branches, and reduced branch connectivity downtime due to redundant MPLS connectivity. On top of these, we are enjoying the benefits of secure branch connectivity."

Muthoot Fincorp chose the FortiGate-1000C, FortiGate-200B and FortiGate-40C for deployment at its datacenter, regional offices and branches respectively. Using a centralized network security policy, the head office now has  control of the organization's Internet and application usage, as well as transactions conducted at every branch. Through a FortiManager-3000C at its datacentre

, the head office can also manage the NGFW security functions from a single-pane-of-glass console. A FortiAnalyzer-1000C helps Muthoot Fincorp with in-depth discovery, analysis, prioritization and reporting of network events.

“Muthoot Fincorp’s large and complex network required an ecosystem of security products that could work harmoniously together," said Rajesh Maurya, Fortinet's Country Manager for India & SAARC. "Fortinet is uniquely positioned to address such requirements cost effectively. Our range of high performance, multi-functional network security and connectivity devices allow us to deliver optimal security solutions to protect the complete networks of financial institutions against the latest Internet threats."

The solution has allowed Muthoot Fincorp to create multiple security zones for its various departments, users, access methods and even devices. By using a sophisticated pattern-matching engine, the institution can identify and remove threats hidden within legitimate application traffic by intercepting and inspecting network traffic at wire speeds.