Padtec was founded in 2001 in Campinas, Brazil. Today, with eight plants in Brazil, the United States, Argentina and Colombia, it is the largest optical transport manufacturer in Latin America, with operations ranging from equipment manufacturing to customer service. The company offers advanced, high-capacity and flexible optical transmission solutions to the largest Internet operators in Brazil and South America, through DWDM technology that optimizes the use of the fiber network.
THE CHALLENGE
Padtec was founded in 2001 in Campinas, Brazil. Today, with eight plants in Brazil, the United States, Argentina and Colombia, it is the largest optical transport manufacturer in Latin America, with operations ranging from equipment manufacturing to customer service. The company offers advanced, high-capacity and flexible optical transmission solutions to the largest Internet operators in Brazil and South America, through DWDM technology that optimizes the use of the fiber network.
“We already knew Fortinet and we were very satisfied with the FortiGate firewalls in Campinas. It is a very robust solution that has always protected us from any incident. Furthermore, its simple management capabilities cannot be compared with those of other players in the market”, says Anderson Pedroso, Padtec Network Analyst.
THE SOLUTION
Based on this experience, Padtec implemented a FortiGate Fortinet SD-WAN solution in both cities, which turned out to be a great use case for the company.
“We reduced our cost and the profit was huge. One benefit of implementing the Fortinet SD-WAN solution was the intelligence of the system, which automatically directs the connection to the most effective link. We reduced connection failures, providing our teams with a better user experience”, adds Pedroso.
Padtec also needed to deal with another situation: the transition to remote work. Thanks to the technology previously installed, the company felt almost no impact from this change. “This aspect was highly praised by our board of directors. Before the pandemic, we used to work remotely only one day a week. In March 2020, we moved 90% of our employees to remote work and had no issues with VPN overload or firewalls. The transition was immediate”, says the executive.
The scenario of growth and hybrid work led Padtec to integrate new solutions into its security platform to further protect its expanding network. With FortiClient EMS, integrated with other Security Fabric solutions, the telecommunications company improved security on its employees’ devices with antivirus, vulnerability scanning, application firewall, software inventory, web filtering, and secure VPN. Another great advantage of FortiClient EMS is the fact that the tool is lightweight, which helped with team adherence as it does not overload devices.
“Centralized management was key for us and FortiClient EMS worked perfectly in that regard – today we have a complete view of employee devices, which used to be a big challenge for us. I can also see the list of software on each machine, check if I have antivirus or outdated systems or if there are CVE vulnerabilities available, which allows me to schedule the automatic patch or do it manually”, explains Pedroso. “In an industrial environment like ours, it is essential to have a solution to create compliance policies for the machines and operating systems connected to our network. Now we have all this integrated, which gives us a lot of confidence.”
The company also needed to improve VPN connections with a load balancer. So, FortiGLSB was implemented to orchestrate and balance the VPNs in the Padtec environment. This allowed users to connect to the various WAN links through one URL, without having to switch connections in the event of unexpected traffic spikes or link failures. According to the Padtec IT team, FortiGLSB greatly improved site-to-client connectivity.
FOCUS ON SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
Padtec’s IT team is also an active user of Fortinet’s NSE Training Program, the online courses allow them to always be up-to-date and better understand the capabilities of the tools they use. The team recognizes these training sessions as a great differential for Fortinet.
The improvement of its networking and security platform encouraged the Internet company to look towards expansion. “We want to open offices in new countries, mainly in North America. When we do that, the Fortinet solution will be there. It has excellent quality and our long-standing relationship proves it. Fortinet brings innovations to the market and helps us be more productive and secure,” concludes Anderson.
