SCC and Fortinet for Sustainable IT

How integration and innovation enables maximised IT security, while simultaneously supporting energy-efficient operations.

Sustainability is a top priority for every type of organisation – and now has to be considered as much more than a box-ticking exercise. This is particularly significant given that PwC found that 94% of investors suspect companies are exaggerating their sustainability credentials. With ICT accounting for up to 6% of global electricity use, the time is now to make meaningful steps towards sustainable operations – both for a healthier organisation, and a healthier planet.

Of course, this has to be balanced against practical considerations such as operational efficiency and financial viability. And in a world where cybercrime is growing in size and sophistication every day, sustainable IT cannot come at the expense of the strongest cybersecurity measures possible.

Balancing the demands of security and sustainability has proved difficult for many organisations in the past – and it’s become clear that an integrated approach to both is the best way forward.

What holds sustainable security back?

There are several different reasons which have prevented organisations from embracing sustainability as much as they would like – or as much as the public, regulators and investors increasingly expect them to. These often include:

• Visibility gaps: piecemeal security and networking solutions make it difficult to get a comprehensive view of an IT estate, due to a complex ecosystem of tools. This hinders threat detection and response, and increases the management and resource consumption required.

• Balancing security and environmental performance: security solutions can often consume large amounts of power and energy, and trying to make savings with existing tools can lead to a lack of performance and therefore additional vulnerabilities.
  
• Large hardware estates: an uncoordinated strategy can lead to bloated hardware and device estates, as different solutions require different equipment. All this extra hardware comes with carbon footprint implications around energy use, storage and cooling.
  
• Driving cost and energy savings simultaneously: efforts to improve sustainability in IT are often thwarted by tight IT budgets, which can lead to a refocusing on solutions that deliver both energy efficiency and value for money.

• Ensuring compliance: increasingly strict legal frameworks around sustainability can lead to legal and financial penalties in the event of non-compliance, and can damage brand reputation at the same time.

An integrated approach to secure sustainability

Fortinet’s leading range of security products, underpinned by the Fortinet Security Fabric, delivers simultaneous reductions in carbon footprint and costs while ensuring the best possible security protection for an IT estate. Supported by SCC’s expertise, advice and deployment support, these solutions have been designed to use up to 60% less power than their predecessors, enabling more environmentally friendly operations without compromising security:

• Data centres and cloud architectures: FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls deliver maximised performance, robust security and support for dynamic hybrid environments, while enabling huge improvements in power consumption and energy efficiency.
  
• Energy-efficient hardware: FortiGate products have yielded power efficiencies of up to 12 times the industry average, with new designs supporting better cooling, lower shipping weights and less use of physical space.
  
• Secure network management: SD-WAN, both on-premise and in the cloud, enables network management with speed, scalability and flexibility, also enabling a reduction on device count across the IT estate.
  
• AI-powered threat intelligence: FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services integrates with a host of Fortinet solutions, and protects applications, devices, users, content and web traffic in real time. Identifying and responding to threats faster reduces the risk of a breach that can consume energy and resources from disruption to resolution.

Market leaders in security and sustainability

SCC and Fortinet have worked together closely for well over a decade, delivering successful security and sustainability solutions across the private and public sectors. The combination of Fortinet technology and SCC’s expertise and consultancy allows us to deploy solutions that are perfectly fine-tuned to the needs of the individual organisation, backed by our joint commitment to environmentally friendly IT:

• End-to-end platform: bring security and networking together in a best-fit solution, with the right products deployed in the right ways and the right places, based on SCC advice.

• Commitment to sustainability: Fortinet hardware power consumption has been reduced by up to 60%, while SCC will reach Net Zero across its own operations by 2040.

• Embrace the circular economy: Fortinet’s return unit programme, and the SCC Recyclea service for refurbishment, remarketing and remanufacturing, extends hardware life cycles and reduces the carbon footprint burden of buying new kit in large quantities.

Sharing your sustainability priorities

Both SCC and Fortinet believe strongly in cultures that support environmentally friendly operations, both for our partners and our own operations. At Fortinet, this means a four-pronged approach: promoting responsible business, addressing cybersecurity risks to society, respecting the environment, and growing an inclusive cybersecurity workforce. This is well-aligned with SCC’s guiding ‘four Ps’ philosophy.

Ready to maximise security and sustainability?
Contact the SCC team today and find out how SCC and Fortinet can collectively help you embrace a new level of sustainability, without compromising your security protection.