Installing New SD-WAN for NYC | BlackHawk Data

How We Kept New York City
Connected and Secure with SD-WAN

There is no shortage of options when choosing an SD-WAN solution. Almost all major networking and security vendors have their own tailored solution. That’s what New York City discovered when they first began their search for a modern solution.

The Problem:

New York City was looking for a cost-effective solution to provide city-wide 4G LTE wireless infrastructure. Their existing infrastructure was outdated, and it couldn’t be scaled or upgraded. New York City turned to BlackHawk Data for our expertise; we worked with them to find a solution that could provide the bandwidth necessary for the large city without breaking the bank or punching holes in their cybersecurity.

The Solution:

After carefully reviewing their options, New York City chose FortiGate and FortiExtender to build their secured citywide network on 4G LTE. The solution was cost-effective, scalable and simple.

Fortinet’s solutions stood out from the competition because they included SD-WAN with other essential features like application security, intrusion prevention system (IPS) and next-generation firewall (NGFW).

Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure placed Fortinet in the leaders category for SD-WAN in 2020. Fortinet keeps improving and introducing new features to design SD-WAN with the flexibility of customers’ unique requirements at no additional cost for licensing.

FortiGate paired with FortiExtender is a very unique solution that allows a 4G LTE SIM card to act as a WAN gateway. This eliminates the need to have an expensive second dedicated internet circuit to eliminate a single point of failure. This solution was ideal for the city agency as it operates on a compact fiscal budget.

Some additional key differentiators that give Fortinet a competitive advantage are:

• Reduced Complexity: Security and networking are managed through a single interface, thus avoiding the complexities often associated with WAN management, configuration, and orchestration. The single-pane-of-glass view not only helps to improve control and visibility, but also reduces the amount of time needed to provision and implement an effective security strategy.

• Centralized Management: FortiGate and FortiExtender with an integrated SD-WAN solution in place allows the agency to manage and orchestrate a single, unified security solution across all branch locations, cloud destinations, and devices. This approach also provides centralized management and automated control of branch office WAN connectivity, while experiencing single-pane-of-glass visibility across the enterprise, including all distributed applications, users, and potential threats.

• Improved Security and Performance: SD-WAN significantly increases the utilization of bandwidth when compared to traditional WAN connections. It allows more effective application accessibility and more robust workflow support. Fortinet integrates SD-WAN solutions with advanced networking and security functionalities like enterprise-grade VPN encryption, SSL inspection, web filtering, dynamic VPN and more. These can enable customers to dynamically scale bandwidth capacity based on their specific requirements through the use of advanced networking functionality without leaving gaps in security.

Why BlackHawk Data?

New York City trusted BlackHawk Data to implement Fortinet SD-WAN because our certified Fortinet engineers and history of projects with the city gave us a unique understanding of the underlying complex technology in New York. We can help you select the perfect solution.