Case Study: World's Largest Financial Institution achieves $100M in savings and automation-ready, scalable firewalls with Fortinet

Supporting Automation and Saving $100M at One of the World’s Largest Financial Institutions

A leading U.S.-based financial services firm with a highly centralized global IT environment issued an RFP to replace its legacy firewall infrastructure after recurring scalability and performance problems—and to support a large automation initiative. The incumbent solution could not complete updates within weekend change windows, causing missed updates and increased risk, so the bank ran exhaustive proofs of concept to find a vendor that could scale, integrate with its automation platform (Red Hat Ansible), and meet strict performance and management requirements.

Following an eight-week POC, the firm selected Fortinet’s solution (FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, FortiCare and Professional Services). Fortinet’s robust REST API enabled deep Ansible integration, the NGFWs passed scalability and performance tests, and FortiManager cut update windows from 48 hours to under one hour. The deployment—supported by onsite engineers and staff training—projected $100 million in cost and productivity savings over five years, increased firewall resiliency without adding staff, and eliminated missed security updates.