Growing healthcare provider offers specialized care with a simplified security solution

SHI and Fortinet ensure end-to-end cybersecurity and threat protection with greater automation.

Challenge:

A large, private, non-profit healthcare provider helps thousands of patients daily, offering special education programs and specialized care in mental health and social services, substance abuse, and developmental disabilities.

After undergoing significant program changes, the customer needed a new cybersecurity solution that could keep up with their growth. With new leadership in place, the customer had sister companies requiring consolidation under one brand across several locations.

It became clear the customer needed less complexity and more automation, visibility, and integration. The healthcare provider determined a simplified licensing model and reliable network solution would be the top factors influencing their buying decision. Now it was time for them to establish a trustworthy partner to help.

Solution:

SHI had already established a relationship with the customer as a top partner in their digital transformation journey, managing their enterprise agreement and supporting a majority of their commodity hardware and software purchases.

After learning of the customer’s security concerns, SHI held discovery calls to go over exactly what the customer was looking for in a security solution. After presenting a variety of options from different manufacturers, the customer ultimately identified Fortinet as the most compatible option. Fortinet would be able to provide high-performing, consolidated security protection across their entire network at an affordable cost.

With that in mind, SHI set up a demo for the customer to explore the features of Fortinet’s vast solutions to determine which specific products would work best for them. The customer ultimately decided they would take advantage of Fortinet’s firewall and unified communications solutions.

Outcome:

Upon deployment, Fortinet immediately made an impact on their security operations. With 300+ locations and growing, the customer was able to outfit the sites with the greatest immediate need first. They implemented FortiGate firewalls for end-to-end security and threat protection and replaced their aging unified communications system with FortiVoice Gateway and 400 FortiFones.

The project enabled the customer to pursue additional initiatives with SHI and Fortinet’s product suite. This included the purchase of access switches and core switches. Some significant upgrades included FortiAnalyzer, FortiManager, FortiClient Endpoint Management Server (EMS), FortiAuthenticator, and FortiSwitches (100, 200, 400, 500, and 1000 Series). The partnership with SHI is ongoing, with current discussion over a five-year enterprise licensing agreement (ELA) with extended detection and response (XDR)/managed detection and response (MDR) at 5,000 units.

The customer was able to take the cost savings that came from consolidating their legacy security solution and reallocate funding to other technologies and projects.