Hays has been a Redcentric customer since 2008 and a close partnership has developed. Over the course of time, as the Hays business and IT needs have changed, various services have been procured from the Redcentric portfolio. In 2021, the decision was made to make a fundamental change to the network architecture in its 102 offices as part of a longer-term strategic plan.
Hays had moved to more flexible working practices post-pandemic and employees were now using video-calling on Microsoft Teams as their default communication tool. With increased video use, more bandwidth was being consumed and the IT team wanted to optimise network performance for users.
With their workforce working flexibly between home and the office, Hays wanted to align the office experience with the home-working experience for users and move to using an internet facing solution with local break out which would deliver faster speeds.
Key objectives were to achieve a solution which would:
Hays evaluated solutions and decided to move away from their Virtual Private Network (VPN) towards a solution which would give them greater control and flexibility as to how they managed network traffic. Deployment began with workshops and testing on pilot sites, followed by a phased deployment. Hays adopted:
The deployment was scheduled to take place in two phases to achieve their vision of an Internet Connected Office (ICO).
By deploying the Fortinet firewalls, we were able to load-balance traffic. We effectively doubled the bandwidth for our critical applications. Fortinet gives us lots of benefits because it allows us to push out changes very quickly. It’s a massive time-saver because it automates it all.
Deployment of Fortinet firewalls for over 95 sites took place in 2021/22. These were deployed with an SD-WAN configuration. The firewalls were deployed by Redcentric engineers within half a day to a day, during which time staff worked from home so that no disruption was experienced. Once the firewalls were deployed, this helped Hays to move to a Zero Trust model which delivered security benefits.
The SD-WAN capability was used to route all traffic and prioritise according to business need. This meant that video traffic classed as high priority traffic could be load-balanced across two office Wide Area Network (WAN) links. The configuration allowed Hays to effectively double bandwidth for the associated traffic resulting in performance improvements.
As part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiAnalyzer was deployed and this provided an integrated security architecture with analytics and automation to provide better detection and response for cyber-attacks.
In 2022/23 the second phase of the deployment to move to a Zero Trust Internet Connected Office (ICO) took place using a zero-touch approach. A configuration template was pushed out via the existing Fortinet firewalls to all offices which allowed Hays to easily convert all sites to an ICO.
Access to applications by users working remotely or in the office was secured by the deployment of FortiClient and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). The Forticlient created a secure connection to the network. Access to the network and any application by users is secured through authentication; device identity, user identity, device health, geo-location, time of day and application permissions.
Having the Fortinet firewalls in place and the SDWAN capability meant it was very easy to migrate all of our 95 offices to Internet Connected Office.
Enhanced network performance
Local break out reduces load into the Hays data centres. A year ago, we were running the primary link at about 200MB, peaking at 300MB. Today, we are running it at under 100MB.
Network visibility
Management control
Fortimanager helps us to ensure a consistently high-quality user experience. It allows you to anticipate performance issues which manifest in poor video quality for users. We can then make changes behind the scenes within the hour and quickly see if those changes have had a positive impact before the business is even aware.
Centralised orchestration and automation
Automation saves us a lot of time, compared to previously when it could take 3-4 hours to push out updates.
Enhanced security
With Zero Trust Network Access we can now control, monitor and remove risk. Previously if someone accessed the office network you could access the whole corporate network as one trusted network. The Fortigate Firewalls now restricts devices and applications which users can access on the network. It flags risks for us to investigate and is helping us to drive our security strategy.
The Hays business model has not changed, but the way their recruitment specialists communicate and engage with their clients has evolved post-pandemic. The SD-WAN deployment is driving and shaping Hays’ security strategy and how they respond to different risks. A future engagement with Redcentric may define who and how security is managed within Hays.
SDWAN and Zero Trust Network Access has been a gamechanger for us. We can now just ask our teams to work from home, if we need to, or in the office. Network performance is better and network security has been enhanced.
