Like any industry, public sector organisations, including housing associations (HAs), must continually innovate to better serve their constituents and clients. Many HAs are moving toward a cloud-first strategy to increase productivity, reduce costs, and provide the best for their tenants. In making this move, an increasing number of HAs rely on cloud-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to connect to tenants and other stakeholders, share files and information, and conduct critical day-to-day business.

Whether your team is out visiting tenants or working from the office, you need swift and secure access to all of your housing data and SaaS apps. This is where software-defined wide-area networks (or SD-WAN) comes into play. SD-WAN is a fast, scalable, and flexible solution to support not only digital innovation within your HA, but also top-notch data security.

Protect your Housing Association from Cyberattacks with Secure SD-WAN

Cybercrime is on the rise, and housing associations are not immune. A data breach can spell disaster for your HA, often resulting in crashed services, damaged reputations, poor tenant relationships, and loss of significant time and money.

For example, in August, attackers stole data from a Salford-based housing group that serves thousands of clients. Two other HAs, which maintain homes in the North West, were also victims of the same ransomware attack. In another recent case, a housing association was defrauded of nearly £1M in a cyber scam in which attackers mimicked the details of contacts who were known to the HA. A landlord reported that a two-step verification was in place, but the spoof misled those copied on the email to believe it was a genuine follow-up. The threat is real and pervasive. 

However, implementing a secure SD-WAN solution can help protect your HA from these threats while enabling you to deliver on performance, service, and growth. In this post, we introduce you to one recommended solution, Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, and the benefits it can bring to your business.

Benefits of Secure SD-WAN for Housing Associations

Implementing the right SD-WAN solution at your HA has myriad benefits for your association and your tenants.

Built-In Security

SD-WAN will protect your users from the pervasive threat of both internal and external attacks. It reduces the risk that people will unknowingly access malicious content (like the email spoofing case mentioned above). However, keep in mind that not all SD-WAN solutions are created equal. Some have security shortcomings. 

Most offerings, including Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, will come with important built-in intrusion prevention and anti-malware at every location, and these are the types of solutions you should seek. Built-in intrusion prevention makes it easier and quicker to stop the spread of malicious code throughout your entire HA organisation. 

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN also offers a Bring-Your-Own-Network functionality, which means that you can bring unmanaged network locations—such as increasingly prevalent remote and co-working spaces or housing sites—under the same streamlined security and applications policies and encrypt traffic from these disparate locations for enhanced security. The Fortinet solution packages both networking and security into single-pane-of-glass management with instant identification of threats, intelligent routing, and simplified security.

As a result, your HA can mitigate the all-to-common risks that are often associated with innovation and digital transformation. 

Improved Performance

Does this sound familiar? You and your team often work from the office, from home and remote spaces, and from the field at tenant and housing visits. You need to be able to access secure business data wherever you are, correct? SD-WAN ensures that the data you need to serve your tenants is always available, no matter where you’re working from that day. 

The right SD-WAN solution, like Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, offers multi-path technology so that if your connection fails on one path, it will fail over to the next best available link. Hence, your critical data is always available to you. And, in the event of failure, SD-WAN’s built-in intelligence will ensure that key applications are prioritised on the remaining line or path. 

SD-WAN will help you optimise your SaaS apps without compromising security. You can use SD-WAN to route internet traffic directly from each location rather than running through a central location. And with NGFW at every location, security is built right into everything.

Simplified Management

Fortinet Secure SD-WAN lets you ship un-configured Fortinet NGFW appliances to each and every housing site. Once plugged in, the FortiGate automatically authenticates the device and connects it to the central management system. This desired single-pane-of-glass-management puts all your visibility into one clear location. Updating policies can be done in just a few simple clicks or steps. Your HA will save time and money, reduce the strain on limited resources, avoid headaches, and, most importantly, remain secure. 

Greater Visibility 

Another key benefit of SD-WAN for your housing association is that many solutions provide robust analytics and reporting features. You’ll have access to key reports, like how your network is supporting your team's overall productivity. With Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, for example, you can also review easy-to-digest and up-to-date threat dashboards to better understand risk within your organisation and review any needed policy changes.

Expert Support

Technologies are changing and growing every day, alongside increasingly sophisticated and frequent cyberattacks on housing associations. We understand how complex it all is and how hard it can be to stay on top of everything. As a Fortinet Expert Partner, this is exactly where our expert team at Optec can help.

Many solutions, including Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, also come with expert support, as a fully managed service. At Optec, our team has the expert knowledge and experience required to design and deliver the optimal SD-WAN solution for your entire HA organisation. We can assist you with customised SD-WAN installation and configuration as well as cybersecurity recommendations, vulnerability assessments, migration, troubleshooting, and overall support and maintenance. 

Ready to securely bring your HA into the next generation and better serve your tenants? Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN is the answer. To learn more, please get in touch with Optec at 01280 878597 or sales@optec.co.uk.

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