Banco Master Blocks 11 Million Threats Daily with Fortinet NGFW and AWS

Banco Master, a Brazilian bank with zero onsite branch locations, is known for having a solution for every phase of a person’s life. With this in mind, a comprehensive solution for data protection, regulatory compliance, and threat visibility that would ensure continuous operations is of utmost importance. Collaborating with AWS Partner Fortinet, Banco Master integrated FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) into its security environment for real-time threat detection and response. This resulted in reduced operational costs, 11 million threats blocked daily, and an assurance of uninterrupted service delivery.

Headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Banco Master operates as both an investment and merchant bank. It specializes in loans, financial services, investments, and insurance for individuals and companies. In response to the rise of remote work, Banco Master needed to ensure its 1,000 employees could work from any location securely. This was especially critical since it uses a lean banking model with no physical branches. Banco Master was presented with unique security challenges related to data protection, remote access, network security, and regulatory compliance specific to Brazil.

Consequently, Banco Master sought a solution that would allow it to safeguard customer data and sensitive financial information while ensuring the continuity of its operations. The bank needed to upgrade its hybrid network infrastructure to enable improved threat detection and prevention. It also needed to provide secure access to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) for remote desktop protocols and file sharing.

For years, Banco Master has relied on AWS Partner Fortinet’s comprehensive cybersecurity ecosystem for its on-premises infrastructure. As the bank began migrating and modernizing to Amazon Web Services (AWS), it deployed one of Fortinet’s flagship security solutions, FortiGate NGFW. FortiGate NGFW is designed to seamlessly integrate with other Fortinet security products and services, creating a unified and cohesive security infrastructure. This integration allows for enhanced threat visibility, real-time threat intelligence sharing, and coordinated responses to security incidents.

Moving to AWS was an easy decision for Banco Master. “Banco Master has long valued AWS for its resilience, high availability, and strict regulatory compliance, particularly when it comes to Brazil’s central banking requirements,” says Rodrigo Alves, security manager at Banco Master. AWS also provides the speed and scalability the bank needs to accommodate its substantial investments and rapid growth. With AWS and FortiGate NGFW, Banco Master was able to bring the same level of control, security, and resilience to its AWS environment that it had with its Fortinet on-premises infrastructure.

“With Fortinet’s robust AWS integration, it’s easy to achieve enterprise-level cloud security,” affirms Aloisio Marinho, business development manager at Fortinet. FortiGate seamlessly integrates with services like Amazon API Gateway and Elastic Load Balancing. With its powerful application control, web filtering, model protection, intrusive prevention system (IPS) technology, and scalable remote access VPN connectivity, FortiGate NGFW offers superior protection for all AWS workloads. Even better, there’s no lag between updates. “Whenever Fortinet updates its big data infrastructure, Banco Master is in the loop with real-time security and software updates, ensuring the safety of its environments,” states Marinho.

Since integrating FortiGate NGFW into its AWS environments, Banco Master has seen a significant reduction in operational costs. This is largely because the bank is now equipped to simplify security management and optimize traffic access. Its current cost reduction plans include proactive measures to mitigate unexpected future expenses. High availability and minimized security threats are key factors in ensuring uninterrupted service delivery and improved customer experience, which is crucial in the banking sector, where every second counts and customer trust is a top priority.

Banco Master's enhanced security architecture has significantly improved its ability to monitor and control network traffic, facilitating proactive security threat detection and response. Thanks to the heightened visibility and control from FortiGate NGFW and AWS, Banco Master now blocks 11 million threats daily, a nearly 100 percent increase in the number of threats blocked before FortiGate NGFW.

Banco Master’s comprehensive cybersecurity ensures that all inbound and outbound connections pass through FortiGate NGFW, guaranteeing secure communication and steadfast connectivity with its partners. The bank is now focused on expanding its FortiGate solution across its entire holding company, which encompasses multiple subsidiaries.

Banco Master’s relationship with AWS is helping it transform its processes and infrastructure beyond security to include an automated and microservices-oriented approach. This includes the deployment of AWS Lambda. Banco Master has over 115 instances of AWS Lambda currently in use, focusing on automation, microservices, and rapid application delivery. The bank is also planning to use services like AWS Step Functions to streamline its application deployment pipeline for greater efficiency.