United Kingdom-based telecommunications operator BT expanded work with long-timer vendor Fortinet to launch a new managed enterprise service that ties together SD-WAN, SD-branch and security services.

The offering combines SD-WAN and SD-branch services using Fortinet’s secure firewall and networking equipment. Customers can connect physical and virtual devices to the network with the platform providing a reporting dashboard to show full visibility into a network.

The BT-managed combination is targeted at BT’s U.K.-based corporate and public sector customers and hybrid working, digital retail and multi-site use cases. The operator cited a recent U.K. government cybersecurity report that found 59% of medium businesses and 69% of large businesses tracked a security breach or attack over the previous 12 months.

More pertinent for the managed aspect of the BT offering is that a significantly smaller number of small-sized enterprises reported attacks, which the government report stated “may reflect that senior managers in smaller organizations view cybersecurity as less of a priority in the current economic climate than in previous years, so are undertaking less monitoring and logging of breaches or attacks.”

“We’re already seeing strong interest from customers with a number of contracts won and being deployed,” Ashish Gupta, managing director for BT’s Corporate and Public Sector business, said in a statement.

The launch bolsters BT’s presence in the managed SD-WAN space. The operator was ranked as a top five global managed SD-WAN vendor by Vertical Systems Group in mid-2021. The carrier came in behind Orange Business, AT&T, Verizon and NTT in that ranking.

Fortinet provides its SD-WAN services to a number of telecom operators, including work with Telefónica, AT&T and Verizon.

The latest deal between BT and Fortinet builds on a long-standing relationship between the two firms.

BT selected Fortinet as one of its “critical” security partners alongside McAfee and Palo Alto Networks. BT also selected Fortinet to power a managed SD-WAN service that uses Fortinet’s FortiGate firewalls to support branch connectivity and the expanded security perimeter resulting from increased reliance on cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications.

Gartner last year ranked Fortinet as a leader in the SD-WAN market alongside rivals Cisco, VMware, Palo Alto Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Aruba and Versa Networks. Gartner cited Fortinet’s “broad on-premises and cloud-based security functions managed with the FortiManager Orchestrator” and multiple purchasing options.

Fortinet earlier this year launched its new FortiSP5 ASIC to power its next generation of entry and mid-range FortiGate firewalls.

The vendor last year launched next-generation firewalls (NGFW) for campus, branch and hybrid data center environments and released its tailor-made firewall services for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment.