Fortinet Powers Cybersecurity Transformation at Tepper Sports & Entertainment

Tepper Sports & Entertainment (TSE), the organization behind the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, MLS’s Charlotte FC, and Bank of America Stadium, has overhauled its cybersecurity posture with Fortinet’s Unified SASE and Security Fabric solutions. The move is designed to simplify operations, reduce complexity, and provide airtight protection across stadiums, offices, training facilities, and the organization’s global workforce.

Securing a High-Stakes Sports Enterprise

For TSE, cybersecurity is no longer just about protecting business systems. The organization manages critical intellectual property, from player scouting data to proprietary playbooks, while simultaneously operating high-density environments like Bank of America Stadium. Each game brings tens of thousands of connected devices onto the network, creating a sprawling and highly dynamic threat surface.

By deploying Fortinet Unified SASE, TSE has consolidated disparate tools into a single, integrated platform. The system supports secure connectivity between venues, protects cloud workloads in Microsoft Azure, and enforces consistent security policies whether users are inside stadium walls or logging in remotely.

“With Fortinet Unified SASE, we have significantly increased our security without adding extra work and inefficiencies for the support team,” said Rob Bence, Vice President of Technology and Cybersecurity at TSE. “With Fortinet, we did not have to learn multiple operating systems, and we can navigate our solutions with confidence. That not only makes us more efficient, but it has removed some of the guesswork of troubleshooting, so we can resolve issues internally more quickly.”

Meeting the Demands of the NFL and MLS

Professional sports organizations must balance fan engagement, high-performance operations, and strict league-mandated security requirements. TSE needed a cybersecurity foundation that could scale with evolving NFL and MLS standards, while staying manageable for its lean IT team.

The Fortinet deployment included:

• Unified SASE with FortiSASE for secure remote access and Secure SD-WAN to connect facilities and cloud environments.

• Secure Networking powered by FortiGate next-generation firewalls and centralized management through FortiManager.

• SecOps capabilities with FortiAnalyzer, providing a unified data lake, automation, and enhanced visibility.

• AI-powered FortiGuard Security Services, including data loss prevention and attack surface management.
  

“Organizations like Tepper Sports & Entertainment are modernizing their infrastructure to meet rising security demands without adding operational overhead,” said Jaime Romero, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Fortinet. “By leveraging Fortinet Unified SASE and FortiGuard AI-powered Security Services, TSE can protect users and data everywhere, from stadiums to remote locations, while simplifying management for a lean IT team.”

Simplifying Complexity, Building for the Future

One of the biggest challenges for TSE was moving away from a patchwork of disconnected point solutions. By shifting to Fortinet’s Security Fabric, the organization not only improved visibility into threats but also reduced training requirements for staff. FortiOS provides a consistent operating environment across firewalls, SASE, and other modules, streamlining management and lowering the burden on internal teams.

“We needed a simple solution so that we could maintain and manage things in-house,” Bence said. “When we looked at how the FortiOS crosses from the firewalls to SASE seamlessly, it was clear we would not need training on multiple different tools. The consistency of the interface across the Fortinet Security Fabric gives us a pure foundation for our future security environment as well, as MLS and NFL requirements change and other needs arise.”

For a sports organization managing massive live events, sensitive team data, and a global workforce, the Fortinet partnership represents more than a technical upgrade. It is a foundation for compliance, resilience, and operational confidence as the stakes in both professional sports and cybersecurity continue to rise.