City of Aurora
How Fortinet Saved the Second-Largest City in Illinois Millions of Dollars on Networking and Security
Download Case StudyOverview
The City of Aurora is the second-largest city in the state of Illinois. Looking to improve public safety, education, and economic development through technology, the city needed to replace its aging network infrastructure, which came with significant security gaps and an exorbitant total cost of ownership (TCO).
With the assistance of Scientel Solutions, a technology integrator, Aurora deployed FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) with FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services. The solution delivers single-pane-of-glass management for its FortiGate NGFWs, FortiSwitch enterprise switches, and FortiAP wireless access points. Through this solution, the city has segmented its network for various departments and public services, lowering its risk profile. For connectivity, a Fortinet Secure SD-WAN balances east-west traffic and monitors for disruptions across the network. The Fortinet Security Fabric has dramatically increased Aurora’s visibility into threats and security events and enhanced its network connectivity—this while saving the city millions of dollars in TCO compared to its legacy environment.
“In my experience, the big difference between Fortinet and its competitors is that Fortinet streamlines network management. Fortinet solutions are all very efficient to manage because the interfaces are easy to use.”
– Keith Wouk, Director of IT Operations, City of Aurora
Business Impact
Less staff time required to maintain network and security environment
Switch configuration takes less than 10 minutes, vs. 30 minutes previously
VPN configuration takes 15 minutes, vs. 3 hours previously
Lean IT team can manage increasingly complex network with no additional hires
$5 million-plus in cost savings on devices and support fees over five years
$150,000 reduction in electricity bills
“Huge” improvement in security through automatic blocking of threat actors, malicious websites
Faster detection of, and response to, security threats
Bandwidth doubled, turbocharging network performance, thanks to Fortinet Secure SD-WAN
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