Alcampo has secured and expedited its business operations with Fortinet. And, the growing digitalization of the supermarket business has caused an increase in the complexity of the systems and the network. The continuity of the business in retail depends more and more on reliable and safe communications between critical applications such as business resources planning (ERP) and a growing range of internet devices of things (IoT) as point of sale terminals, digital scales, barcodes scanners and a variety of logistics sensors.
The little integration of the networks and previous security infrastructure of the company, together with the wide diversity of IT and IoT devices used, which often used different Wi-Fi access technologies and some of them were too old to be able to be patched, made the Systems and Security Administration become a growing challenge.
Alcampo opts by Fortinet
This growing complexity of management was shooting operating expenses and limiting operational efficiency. For Francisco Marcial Lorenzo, Communications Director, Information Systems and Cybersecurity of Alcampo, it was clear that it was necessary to replace the existing access infrastructure with a new convergent architecture of networks and security to reduce general complexity and, at the same time, improve security, visibility and operational efficiency.
It was decided to maintain the existing infrastructure because the telecommunications contracts were in force and because it was necessary to fulfill aggressive short -term deadlines, however, Lorenzo wanted to make sure to continue having the necessary flexibility to make the transition to more reliable and profitable alternatives in the future. For this reason, he decided to use an extensive area network architecture defined by software (SD-WAN).
A list of three possible SD-Wan solutions was evaluated mainly based on its degree of integration, ease of management, visibility amplitude (both network communications and cyber-cyber threats) and operational cost. After an exhaustive evaluation, Alcampo selected the Fortinet Secure SD-ElBank solution that covers the Foregate New Generation Firewall, the high performance Switch LAN and the wireless access point, in line with Fortinet’s philosophy to converge network services into the security infrastructure through the Fortinet operating system, forties within the Security Fabric architecture.
The retailer has made both the operating expenses of the network and the total time dedicated to daily security operations have been reduced around 30%
To improve the protection of the IoT devices of Alcampo, particularly those that cannot be paveled due to obsolete operating systems, the equipment was able to use the capacities of the intrusion prevention system within to apply a vulnerability mitigation technique called “virtual patch.” Alcampo also uses the intelligence of real -time threats of the Fortinet team, Fortiguard Labs (which takes advantage of the extensive global network of sensors and analysis centers based on Fortinet), to label potentially vulnerable devices.
The deployment has included the Fortimanager solution to provide centralized visibility, continuous supervision and supply and management of automated changes of all the safety solutions implemented. “The greatest visibility and centralized control offered by Fortimanager has changed the rules of the game. Instead of always being reactive, we can anticipate potential problems before they occur, reducing our support load and freeing us for more proactive tasks such as planning and optimization,” explains Lorenzo. “The solution allows us to analyze end -to -end traffic, from the user to the application server, which makes the problems much easier.”
A safe base for the future
The initial objectives of increasing visibility and reducing the complexity of the administration have been met with the deployment of Fortinet Secure Sd-Canch. Both network operating expenses and total time dedicated to daily operations have been reduced around 30%.
“With a view to the future, we still have several smaller supermarkets with inherited technology that will need to be renewed with additional Fortinet infrastructure, already measure that our business grows, their demands for IT and network services will continue to increase,” explains Lorenzo. “The difference now is that, in alliance with Fortinet, we have established safe and scalable bases to build that future.”
