SASE and SSE services are available using Secure Gateways hosted by Equinix
Comcast Business on Monday announced a partnership with enterprise security firm Fortinet to deliver Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Secure Service Edge (SSE) solutions as managed services to Comcast Business customers. The new services will be offered using Comcast Business Secure Gateways.
Comcast hosts those secure gateways at Equinix data centers throughout the U.S. Equinix’s Fabric interconnection service helps to manage the connectivity securely. Equinix Fabric supports Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM and more than 200 SaaS providers, according to the companies.
“Comcast Business Secure Gateways provide a fully-hosted set of SASE or SSE services covering a broad range of security networking solutions for Firewall-as-a-Service (FWaaS), Intrusion Prevention (IPS), Data Loss Prevention (DLP), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA),” said Comcast Business.
Amit Verma, Chief Technology Officer, Enterprise Solutions, Comcast Business, said that the expansion of Comcast’s Fortinet partnership is aimed at improving flexibility and choice for its business customers at the increasingly frenetic pace of business evolution.
“In today’s dynamic world, no two companies are alike and very few are the same as they were just two years ago,” said Verma. “By expanding our relationship with Fortinet, we are offering our clients more choice and the flexibility to choose a solution that works for them – while providing some of the latest security solutions to help keep them ready for the day – today and tomorrow.”
It’s another feather in the cap for Fortinet, coming off a week of news related to Amazon’s recent AWS re:Inforce, a two-day event focused on AWS cloud security services and practices. It was there that Fortinet announced a new partnership with cloud area networking specialists Alkira to help secure on-premise infrastructure with public cloud services, as well as a new product release: FortiCNP, cloud-native security for CSPs that provides risk and threat management, data and container security.
The burgeoning market for Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) services like Fortinet’s SASE is exploding, along with corporate demand for SSE. SSE provides a similar security posture to SASE without the overlay of SD-WAN. Dell’Oro Group’s latest figures show that the SSE market grew 40% year-over-year.
“In the age of distributed apps and hybrid work, enterprises increasingly prefer cloud-delivered security over traditional on-premises solutions,” said Mauricio Sanchez, Research Director, Network Security, and SASE & SD-WAN at Dell’Oro Group. Hybrid cloud deployments and hybrid work policies are both cited as key accelerators for the security software’s rise in popularity. Cloud-based security platforms like Fortinet’s provide an appealing alternative to companies looking to avoid huge CapEx spend on security, as the delivery model is done as a service.
In March, Orange Business Services added Fortinet SASE to its enterprise security arsenal. The goal is to provide Orange customers with real-time service updates and a better user experience. Orange Business Services says the solution is an end-to-end SASE offering that’s available globally.
Anne-Marie Thiollet, Orange Business Services’ EVP, Global Solutions, said the Fortinet partnership underscores the company’s cloud-focused evolution.
“By integrating Fortinet Security-driven Networking technologies into the Orange telco cloud infrastructure, we enable our customers to easily adopt a cloud-native environment that is increasingly critical for businesses globally,” she said.
