Simplifying School Security with Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN and SD-Branch

School networks are highly distributed and becoming much more complex and diverse with the addition of digital learning, online educational initiatives, and the integration of IoT devices into school buildings and classrooms. This rapid adoption of new technologies is placing a new set of burdens on IT teams, who are tasked with securing distributed and diverse technology environments on limited budgets while needing to maintain administrative control from a single, centralized location. To help the education sector's IT teams address these challenges, Fortinet delivers an integrated, centrally managed solution that is much easier to administer. Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution integrates next-generation firewall (NGFW) security with its advanced routing and WAN optimization capabilities enabling schools to ensure defense in-depth for sensitive student and faculty data out of the box. IT staff are able to oversee both WAN optimization and security functions from a single interface. Additionally, this centralization further reduces total cost of ownership (TCO) by shrinking necessary labor costs.

Fortinet’s secure SD-Branch solution is a natural extension of the Secure SD-WAN solution deployed at distributed locations. SD-Branch augments the connectivity and security of Secure SD-WAN by adding local network access controls, providing and securing local switching and wireless capabilities, and securing LAN-based IoT devices – all from the same consolidated platform. This approach provides IT teams with granular control over the composition of the network.