BT gets SASE with Fortinet

An evolution of software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), SASE (pronounced 'sassy') helps organisations get to grips with a distributed workforce by bringing together wide area networking (WAN) and enterprise-grade security, and delivering it as a service from the edge of the network.

The intended result is fast and – equally importantly – secure access to corporate data and applications regardless of where an employee is working from – headquarters, a branch office, or home.

According to Gartner stats published last year, the global market for SASE solutions is expected to grow 29% over the next five years, with revenue on course to reach $25 billion in 2027.

BT already provides a managed SD-WAN service protected by a firewall, but it is now enhancing it with secure service edge (SSE) capabilities developed by Fortinet. These include firewall-as-a-service, secure Web gateway, cloud access security broker, and zero-trust network access. Together these will enable customers to upgrade to a fully-managed SASE environment.

"Our partnership with Fortinet is another signal to customers that BT has their back as they invest to become even more successful, creative, digital businesses," said Matt Swinden, director of digital connectivity at BT. "Our new managed service enables them to provide consistent, seamless and secure experiences to their users of cloud-hosted digital services regardless of where they are accessing them from. This will help customers manage risk as they innovate with the latest connected technologies from IoT to AI."

According to data published by BT last year, businesses worldwide fend off approximately 530 cyberattacks every second. The most targeted sectors are IT, banking, insurance and defence, followed by retail, hospitality and education.

Earlier this year, Verizon said cybersecurity 'incidents' reached a record high in 2023, and the number of successful breaches doubled, as attackers scoured devices and networks for zero-day vulnerabilities.

In October, cybersecurity specialist Zscaler's ThreatLabz report identified a12% year-on-year increase in the number of attempts to deliver malware to IoT devices, and a 45% jump in the number of malicious IoT transactions it blocked.

Like Fortinet, Zscaler advocates for zero-trust network architecture that enforces access policies based on contextual data – namely the user's job function, location, device and the data they are requesting. If anything seems off, then access is denied.

This is the sort of environment that BT and Fortinet want to provide with their managed SASE solution.

"Building upon our decade-long partnership, we're proud to collaborate on the new SASE service with BT to enable its UK customers to converge networking and security," said Nirav Shah, vice president of products and solutions at Fortinet. "SASE complements the cybersecurity platform approach to delivering integrated security and secure network access regardless of where users are located. By combining Fortinet's cutting-edge SASE and secure networking solutions with a leading choice of fixed and 5G access networks from BT, customers can have a nimble, robust, and more secure network to help them get the best from the cloud."