Next on the agenda
The next step, says Westmark, is to get the company's foreign locales connected to the network. He concedes that with the company's rapid expansion, one challenge has been managing the satellite offices. Some of these offices have different operating hours and Westmark's team could not provide 24/7 support for them. So, along with more staff needing connections to the corporate home base, Westmark says he needs to increase staffing of his IT group.
“Over the past 10 years, we've worked to get all the North American offices connected,” he says. “Over the next 10 years, we will work to get all the foreign properties connected as well.”
When that happens, he says the company will see additional benefits from the installation of the Fortinet tools.
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Protection: More than filters
As SC Magazine's Technology Editor Peter Stephenson pointed out in a review last year, the FortiGate appliance, such as the one installed at Troon Golf, contains many other features besides web filters.
“It allows the user to set up VPNs, control access to areas of the network though firewalls, and configure many different types of filters.”
The appliance, he concludes, is “a good buy for medium to larger organizations looking for an all-around gateway and filtering tool…it performs many tasks in a single box and is able to keep logs organized and easily accessible in one place.”