UAE Central Bank locks gate with Fortinet

The UAE Central Bank has chosen Fortinet, provider of unified threat management (UTM), to secure its online services.

The Central Bank needed to secure its main services online, includiFortinet UTM appliances to protect Central Bank's systems ng the soon to be implemented Image Cheque Clearing System , its reporting services and its email servers on its closed internal network.

"We handle a lot of very confidential and time sensitive data for which security is absolutely essential. So, when we decided to move our existing services and systems online for more efficiency, we had to ensure that not only our data would be protected but also that our network would maintain its high performance, delivery throughput and high availability," said Bob Thomson, senior manager of IT projects at Central Bank.

Fortinet's appliances have been deployed as part of the Central Bank's primary firewall and antivirus solution to help safeguard data, online transactions and communications. Two FortiGate-800 multi-threat security appliances were deployed in a cluster at the Central Bank's central office in Abu Dhabi. These appliances will provide automatic back up without downtime.

In addition, the bank deployed a FortiGate-200 appliance at its Dubai office, which is also its disaster recovery site. FortiGate appliances integrate security applications and services, including anti-virus, firewall, virtual private network (VPN), intrusion prevention, anti-spam, anti-spyware, web filtering and traffic shaping, into one platform.

"Between the high sensitivity of financial data and the banking industry's inevitable evolution towards online communications, financial institutions have more stringent network security requirements than ever," said Patrice Perche, vice president of EMEA and India for Fortinet. "Many enterprises, such as UAE Central Bank, realize that in-depth defense is what's needed to help prevent network compromise and choose FortiGate systems to help effectively protect themselves against blended security threats coming from both external and internal sources."