Press Releases

Muthoot Fincorp Selects Fortinet to Secure Entire Network of 3,800 Branches

BANGALORE, India, May 6, 2015 – Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT) – a global leader in high performance cyber security solutions – today announced that Muthoot Fincorp Ltd, a leading provider of diversified retail financial services, has deployed its FortiGate® network security platform, and 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 the high performance, comprehensive security features and ease of management of its solutions.

Muthoot Fincorp is a large non-banking finance company (NBFC) registered with the Reserve Bank of India. Its customized 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 every day, .

Prior to the Fortinet deployment, Muthoot Fincorp's branches were linked to its head office over unsecured broadband connections. There was no fall back or assurance on quality of service. 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. Attributes that Muthoot Fincorp wanted in its new infrastructure included security, availability, performance, scalability, modularity and simplicity.

Many factors differentiated Fortinet's solutions from those of competing vendors, including MPLS support; extensive next-generation firewall (NGFW) features offering exhaustive 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 various service providers.

"Our experience with Fortinet's solutions and support has been very reassuring," said Nilakantan Krishnan, 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 complete 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.

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.

“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."