Case Study: MFA Incorporated achieves enhanced companywide security and reliable rural connectivity with Fortinet

Endpoint Security and ZTNA Pave a Path to the Future for a Midwest Farming Cooperative

MFA Inc., a century-old Midwest farming cooperative with roughly 120 retail stores and 70 agricultural locations, needed to modernize security and connectivity while operating with a very small IT/security staff and tight budgets. Inconsistent networking equipment, unreliable rural broadband, a POS/ERP migration, and limited endpoint and email protections pushed the co-op to seek a standardized, scalable solution that could reduce risk and simplify management.

MFA deployed a Fortinet stack—FortiGate NGFWs, Secure SD-WAN, FortiMail, FortiManager/FortiAnalyzer, FortiAP, FortiEDR and FortiClient EMS with Universal ZTNA—securing about 1,500 endpoints and centralizing control. The rollout delivered a much stronger security posture, reliable rural connectivity with automated failover, faster policy changes (minutes instead of days), improved Wi‑Fi and endpoint visibility, eligibility for cyber insurance, and avoided adding new security headcount while setting up a path to zero‑trust segmentation.

MFA Incorporated

Loren Woody

Senior Manager, IT Operations