The Virtual Firewall Service allows Alberta public organizations to cut down on their firewall maintenance costs by removing the need to host their own physical firewall devices.
The service has now expanded to include FortiNet offerings, and is being made available to any small public institution in Alberta that is a member of Cybera.
A year after its successful launch, Alberta’s first public Virtual Firewall Service has now expanded to include FortiNet security offerings. This will give members more options when setting up their personalized firewall application on the cloud platform.
The Virtual Firewall Service was developed by Cybera, Alberta’s not-for-profit technology accelerator, to address the growing demands placed on public institutions to ensure the security of their internet firewalls.
Maintaining a series of physical firewall devices can be prohibitively time-consuming and expensive for administrators. This is particularly true for organizations whose facilities are spread out over dozens or even hundreds of kilometres.
The Virtual Firewall Service removes the need to buy and maintain a physical firewall device, and also reduces bandwidth usage (as different facilities no longer have to route through a separate location). And since the firewall is hosted on Cybera’s Rapid Access Cloud, it is scalable to meet the growing needs of public institutions, while ensuring participants’ data are kept within Alberta.
Originally available to K-12 schools and smaller post-secondary institutions, the service is now being offered to any public sector member of Cybera (including libraries and municipalities), whose traffic bandwidth is under 1.3 Gbps.
To find out how to join, contact firewall@cybera.ca.