BT unveils managed SASE service

With cyber security breaches and attacks remaining a common risk, and threatening to derail organisations’ digital transformation efforts, BT has expanded its managed software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution for business and public sector customers in the UK with new security service edge (SSE) capabilities.

According to research released by BT in September, it detects more than 2,000 signals of potential cyber attacks every second and saw a 1,234% annual rise in new malicious internet protocol (IP) scanners recorded across its networks in the 12 months to July 2024. The comms provider said web-connected devices are scanned more than 1,000 times a day by known malicious sources – an average of once every 90 seconds.

While some scans are conducted legitimately for security monitoring, BT warned that just over three-quarters of them are not harmless, indicating that hackers are looking for weaknesses in the online systems of businesses and essential public services as smart tech becomes common.

Such increases are said to reflect how cyber criminals are increasingly scanning for vulnerabilities through automated “one-time use” disposable bots in an attempt to evade existing blocking and security measures. BT’s analysis found IT, defence and financial services to be the three most targeted industries for cyber attacks.

In addition, the use of cloud technology is intensifying as businesses increasingly digitise, shifting apps and data from private datacentres into public cloud services. At the same time, organisations are more dispersed than ever, with people and devices accessing digital services from everywhere.

Using technology from Fortinet, BT’s expanded SD-WAN service is designed to help customers transition from managed SD-WAN to secure access service edge (SASE) and go ahead with their digital transformation by protecting access to their applications and data in the cloud. The new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered SSE capabilities are intended to provide a firewall as a service, secure web gateway, cloud access security broker and zero-trust network access to provide a complete, managed SASE solution.

The result, said BT, will enhance customers’ oversight of their networks backed with AI-powered proactive threat detection and data protection via BT’s unified monitoring services in the UK. It added that the solution can also help customers create a zero-trust infrastructure by continuously interrogating the credentials of users and devices attempting to access the network either on the edge or out and about.   

“Our partnership with Fortinet is another signal to customers that BT has their back as they invest to become even more successful, creative, digital businesses,” commented Matt Swinden, director of digital connectivity at BT. “Our new managed service enables them to provide consistent, seamless and secure experiences to their users of cloud-hosted digital services regardless of where they are accessing them from. This will help customers manage risk as they innovate with the latest connected technologies from IoT [internet of things] to AI.”

Nirav Shah, vice-president of products and solutions at Fortinet, added: “Building upon our decade-long partnership, we’re proud to collaborate on the new SASE service with BT to enable its UK customers to converge networking and security. SASE complements the cyber security platform approach to delivering integrated security and secure network access regardless of where users are located. By combining Fortinet’s cutting-edge SASE and secure networking solutions with a leading choice of fixed and 5G access networks from BT, customers can have a nimble, robust and more secure network to help them get the best from the cloud.”