Customer Perspectives

Fast and effective networks are fundamental to the legal profession. Every day, lawyers and their support teams must exchange information such as case files, legal documents, and client data. Interruption to these data streams can result in reduced productivity and a drop in client service levels. Security is also critical because sensitive legal data is a tempting target for hackers.

Modernizing Network Switching

With these considerations in mind, one large U.S. law firm with offices across the country set out on a large-scale network transformation. After the company deployed a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) between their remote sites using Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, it determined that it also needed to overhaul its switching infrastructure in its data center, large offices, and small branches.

The firm's legacy core data center switches had reached the end of their operational life and required a spanning tree to operate. The firm required new data center-class switches with 100-gigabit internal segmentation capabilities and deep buffer switching.

To overhaul the switching infrastructure used in its large offices, the firm needed a solution that could meet 40-gigabit standards and manage 55 closet switches while removing the spanning tree protocol. The switches also needed to be able to support high-speed internal segmentation and hundreds of access points in the future. The firm's legacy branch office switches were also showing signs of age, and they needed a switching solution for these small offices that again didn't rely on a spanning tree to operate.

The law firm also required high-availability logging capabilities that could span multiple data centers with redundant logging, so that 100% of logs across the network would be maintained even in the event of a failure.

Expanding to the Fortinet Security Fabric

At first, the firm intended to continue working with its existing switch provider for its switching infrastructure upgrade project. However, after seeing a demonstration of the Fortinet Security Fabric, the firm realized that seamlessly integrating switching with its existing Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution would be preferable to multiple stacks of independent switches. Based on a single operating system, FortiOS, the Fortinet Security Fabric is the industry's highest performing and most expansive cybersecurity platform. It converges networking and security, providing real-time threat detection and policy enforcement across the entire digital attack surface. After a successful proof of concept, Fortinet was brought on as the law firm's new switching infrastructure partner, and since then, the firm has expanded the partnership by migrating their wireless to Fortinet's latest generation Wi-Fi 6E access points.

Today, the firm uses FortiSwitch Ethernet switches across its core, branch, and large offices, removing the reliance on spanning trees for operations. The FortiSwitches they selected come with full Power over Ethernet capability, which eliminates the need for separate power supplies and outlets.

In the company's core and large office networks, FortiSwitch devices enable robust network segmentation, providing a cost-effective core replacement and data center-class switching solution that is managed through a single Fortinet interface. The switches are managed through the same FortiManager and FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) that the firm had already invested in as part of its earlier SD-WAN upgrade. The firm also deployed FortiAnalyzer, a log management, analytics, and reporting platform, in its two data center sites, which receives logs from the firm's edge and core FortiGate NGFWs.

Simplified Management and Robust Network Segmentation

The firm is benefitting in several areas from the move to Fortinet solutions and the integration with the Fortinet Security Fabric. Because the switching infrastructure is integrated with the Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution, the firm's staff benefits from easier management. They can manage and configure the data center, branch, and large office networks from the same place, which saves a significant amount of time, effort, and cost.

The Fortinet Security Fabric also has delivered on the firm's ultimate goal of achieving complete end-to-end network segmentation. The performance of the firm's network has improved by enabling extensive log management, and the firm's device-based monitoring expenses will drop as the site footprints shrink from hundreds of devices to a single FortiGate.

Fueled by data from the company's FortiGate NGFWs and FortiSwitches, FortiAnalyzer is helping reduce the risk of network outages by enabling rich data-driven insights. And the branch offices benefit from a further boost to performance from the new high-speed backbone created by the new Fortinet switching infrastructure.

Thanks to integration provided by the Fortinet Security Fabric, this leading law firm is experiencing the full benefits of a cybersecurity mesh architecture: simplicity, performance, and cost-effectiveness.

Find out how the Fortinet Security Fabric platform delivers broad, integrated, and automated protection across an organization's entire digital attack surface to deliver consistent security across all networks, endpoints, and clouds.