Comcast Business yesterday announced collaborations with cloud security firms Fortinet and Akamai designed to help business customers protect their networks from hackers.
The business communications arm of the broadband and entertainment conglomerate and Fortinet are working together to develop advanced security solutions for midsize and enterprise customers via Comcast Business’ ActiveCore software-defined-networking (SDN) platform and via Fortinet’s FortiGate-VM Next-Generation Firewall Virtual Appliance and Fortinet Security Fabric. The combination is expected to help protect against a variety of security threats, including malware and attacks that simultaneously target different network vulnerabilities.
The partnership with Akamai will involve working with Comcast to develop cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. Citing an unnamed study, Comcast said that nearly half of small businesses in the United States suffered a cyberattack in 2017.
“In today’s hyper-connected world, cyberthreats are becoming more sophisticated and prevalent. No organization is too large or too small to be a target,” said Bob Victor, SVP of product management, for Comcast Business, in a prepared statement. “These strategic initiatives will drive increased cybersecurity innovation across our product portfolio, helping customers of all sizes stay protected and secure. We’re thrilled to work with these two industry leaders and look forward to unveiling the output of these relationships in the near future.”
In a prepared statement, John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO at Fortinet, added: “Organizations undergoing digital innovation need an efficient and advanced security solution designed to protect their WAN edge. We welcome the opportunity to work with Comcast Business to deliver integrated security solutions – to help protect critical data from the network core to the edge.”
Small and medium business, as well as enterprise segments are significant growth targets for the traditional cable industry. Once dominated by larger telcos, cable companies have made significant progress taking market share from these incumbents. Network and cybersecurity solutions have become key to business customers. Accenture recently sponsored a study that found malware and malicious insider attacks jumped 11% and 15%, respectively in 2018. The former now costs U.S. companies an average of $2.6 million annually and the latter $1.6 million.
