Case Study: Baleària achieves secure, high-performance Smart Ship digital services with Fortinet

Leading Spanish Shipping Company Launches Smart Ship Project With New Secure Digital Services Network

Baleària, the leading passenger, vehicle and goods ferry operator serving the Balearic Islands and routes to Ceuta, Melilla, the Canary Islands and North Africa, set out to launch a “Smart Ship” program to deliver modern digital services onboard. The company selected nine passenger ships for the first phase but faced a major challenge: limited, costly satellite bandwidth and a lack of network visibility and control that threatened security, performance and passenger experience for streaming, mobile payments, digital boarding and other services.

Baleària deployed a converged Fortinet solution—FortiAP wireless, FortiSwitch Ethernet and FortiGate next‑generation firewalls with FortiGuard threat intelligence—segmenting traffic into VLANs, hosting high‑bandwidth content on onboard servers and offering tiered internet access (including free WhatsApp and pay‑as‑you‑go browsing). The architecture delivered centralized land‑based management, stronger security and predictable performance, improving customer satisfaction and profitability, increasing remote visibility and resilience, and enabling expansion of digital services and sustainability initiatives like real‑time emissions monitoring.

Baleària

Francisco Abril Hita

Director of IT Infrastructure