The security you need now, not next quarter
A firewall is the one purchase where waiting for the next capital cycle is a genuine risk, not just an inconvenience. Financing removes the delay: you deploy a current FortiGate — sized for the throughput and inspection you actually need — and spread the appliance cost across the years it protects the edge. The capital an HA pair and a fabric of FortiSwitch and FortiAP would have consumed stays in the business, working, while the security is already live.
Fund the appliance, subscribe the protection
FortiGate value splits in two — the appliance is a capital asset, and FortiGuard (IPS, web filtering, sandboxing) plus FortiCare support are term subscriptions. Financing the hardware over a period that matches the FortiGuard bundle keeps the whole security line on one predictable monthly, rather than a capital hit for the box and a separate renewal for the protection. Where the deployment extends to the branch edge, our Fortinet Secure SD-WAN page covers that side, and the wider cyber-security team can scope the fabric.
- •FortiGate — entry, mid-range and data-centre next-gen firewalls
- •HA pair — active-active or active-passive resilient edge
- •Security Fabric — FortiSwitch and FortiAP under one policy
- •Align the term with the FortiGuard and FortiCare subscription
Keep your cash working while the edge is protected
The real case for financing security is timing: paying cash strips working capital the moment you can least justify the delay of not, while financing keeps that capital liquid and returns it as a fixed monthly. Over a five-year hold the finance cost is modest against what the retained cash does in the business. Our comparison of finance versus paying cash lays the trade-off out, and the calculator quotes hire purchase, lease and subscription on your FortiGate value.
Size for tomorrow, spread the difference
The trap with a cash-bought firewall is buying exactly the throughput you need today. Enable full SSL inspection, IPS and application control and effective throughput drops sharply, so a box sized to this year's traffic is often the one you rip out early when inspection load or the link speed climbs. Financing changes that calculation: because you pay a monthly rather than the whole sum at once, sizing up to the next FortiGate model — with the inspection headroom to turn every feature on and still grow — adds only a few pounds a month, not a wall of extra capital.
That headroom is what stops a firewall becoming the bottleneck. Spread the difference between the model that just fits and the one that comfortably fits, and the appliance lasts its full term instead of forcing an unplanned mid-cycle swap.