Fortinet Secures the global network of DTDC Express, India’s Second Largest Express Distribution Company

Fortinet  recently announced that DTDC ExpressLtd.,India’s leading express distribution and logistics company,has bolstered its existing Fortinet Security Fabric deployment, which spans 30 global offices and over 450 branches in India, by modernizing their datacenter and branch firewalls.

DTDC Express Ltd. is the second largest express distribution company in India in terms of spread and coverage. Their logistic services include business units such as courier and cargo services, e-commerce delivery, e-fulfilment, surface cargo, retail services, international express distribution services and third party logistics. DTDC Express has a presence in more than 500 districts through a large network of 10,500 franchisees that provide last mile connectivity to reach 10,500 PIN code locations.The company handles over 12 million shipments every month, delivering an average of 4 lakh (400,000) parcels every day.

To better defend against sophisticated cyber threats seen in recent years and provide identity-based access to applications, DTDC Express decided to upgrade its existing firewall implementation to segment and control its network. The growing business demanded advanced threat protection capabilities with higher throughput to provide real-time connectivity and support for its end-to-end consignment tracking and tracing of shipments.Its network had more than 15,000 users, so device identification and management were critical to provide access based on the type of device, operating system and the IP address connecting to the network.

The refreshedFortinet Security Fabric deployment allowed DTDC to secure its network and datacenter with intrusion prevention and detection, content filtering and web filtering, application control and two-factor authentication to protect its web and mobile based tracking applications.

Fortinet Security Fabric enables advanced threat protection and user management along with high speed network infrastructure.

Following a thorough evaluation, DTDC Express selected Fortinet over competitors as its cybersecurity provider because of the Fortinet Security Fabric’s ability to deliver comprehensive and collaborative security capabilities across the entire network. Supported by a single source of threat intelligence from FortiGuard Labs, the Fortinet Security Fabric leverages technologies from Fabric-Ready Partners through an open integration ecosystem, and can be extended deep into new network environments with a single click using advanced Fabric Connector technology.

“Fortinet’s security solutions have been protecting our network for over 12 years now. We have deployed three generations of FortiGate Firewalls that have evolved from a UTM into a comprehensive Security Fabric to protect our network right from the data center to our remote branches and global offices. The FortiGate 3000D Next-Generation Firewall is a very simple-to-manage yet comprehensive security solution that helps us to control access with policies that segregate users based on their roles. A highly secure DNS caching system adds another layer of protection to our network and ensures business continuity,” said Mrinal Chakraborty, Executive VP Technology and Innovation, DTDC Express Ltd.

DTDC Express has deployed multiple FortiGate enterprise firewalls to secure its datacenter and branches to ensure high availability and better user management:

• Reliable, low-latency performance: FortiGate helps reduce latency, while the significantly higher throughput has helped DTDC turn on multiple security technologies like intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, web filtering, content filtering, applicationcontrol, device identification and management without compromising user and customer experience.

• Network segmentation to protect internal threats: The internal network segmentation firewall helps DTDC Express create consistent policy and enforcement deep in the network, beyond the perimeter, to manage and secure the lateral movement of data and applications.

• Secure branch connectivity: The overseas branches are now securely connected to the main datacenter through anSSL VPN connection, enabling users to access applications while deploying centralized user policies and control.

• Seamless management and improved visibility: Fortinet provides DTDC Express withsingle-pane-of-glass control of its network infrastructure from one console at the head office.The FortiAnalyzer centralized logging and reporting appliance provides visibility of all devices and users that connect to the network, easing threat mitigation.

• Fully qualified domain names:  FortiGuard Domain Reputation Service provides DTDC Express with a regularly updated list of known, malicious fully qualified domain names. This prevents their DNS servers from reaching known malicious sites, and helps prevent attacks that obfuscate source IPs using hijacked domain names.

• Potential to scale: Thanks to the Fortinet Security Fabric’s scalability, DTDC Express can continue to grow its business and expand operations by securely adding new branches to its network.

“Technology is the backbone that holds together our operational services and we have been investing extensively to ramp up our infrastructure to enable our business expansion. Considering the fluid nature of our business and the range of applications and data flowing across our network, we needed a security solution that would provide us with the visibility to control user access. The Fortinet Security Fabric has helped us achieve our goal to create consistent policy and enforcement across the network. Additionally, massive amounts of data are being collected and correlated in our network environment. It was especially critical that segmentation controls be established to detect and isolate threats that have managed to penetrate the perimeter of our network. With Fortinet’s high-performance internal firewall, we are able to effectively protect our network from threats moving laterally across our network,” said Anil Kumar K K, Assistant General Manager IT, DTDC Express Ltd.

“DTDC Express has been our customer for 12 years, and we are pleased that through this latest deployment, we can continue to support their digital transformation efforts with our cutting-edge technologies. With Fortinet’s unique Security Fabric architecture and our FortiOS 6.0, DTDC has the option to add 200 new security features and capabilities for continuous risk assessment via automation. That will help deal with the issue of scarce security staff and also to continuously maintain compliance posture, said Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC, Fortinet.