Fujitec

Fujitec accelerates global safety and security with Cloudflare One

Fujitec is dedicated to moving people safely. Founded in 1948, Fujitec is a world-leading specialist manufacturer of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways, operating across 23 countries and regions in Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. With a workforce of over 11,000 employees, the company’s core mission is to provide "peace of mind and safety" to millions of people daily. To uphold their commitment to “peace of mind and safety” in the digital age, Fujitec recognized that their IT infrastructure had to be as reliable and secure as the high-tech machinery they maintain.

To modernize their global IT and security architecture, Fujitec is partnering with Cloudflare to implement their connectivity cloud: one unified control plane that ensures safe, seamless access to any resource from any device, regardless of location.

Moving beyond the vulnerabilities of legacy infrastructure

For a manufacturer supporting 24/7 urban mobility, a halt in IT infrastructure is a safety risk.

“If our IT infrastructure were to be disrupted by a ransomware attack or similar incident, it could lead to delays in arranging maintenance services and hinder our ability to promptly provide information to customers. To ensure the continued provision of ‘safe and secure’ services, upgrading our security environment to the next generation was an urgent priority.” says Mr. Ryuta Kitano - Manager, Information Security Control Office, DIGITAL INNOVATION HQ.

Fujitec’s legacy environment suffered from fragmented management across multiple vendors and a heavy reliance on physical VPN hardware. These VPN "chokepoints" caused severe latency for employees, triggering 10 to 20 troubleshooting requests per month. This constant "firefighting" consumed valuable time that the IT team needed for strategic transformation initiatives.

To shift from reactive maintenance to proactive innovation, Fujitec replaced their legacy VPNs and modernized their access approach with Cloudflare. This transition helped drive three critical outcomes:

• Shrinking the attack surface: Eliminating VPNs removed vulnerable entry points, fundamentally hardening Fujitec’s security posture.
• Improving end user experiences globally: Fujitec’s distributed workforce benefits from consistent, high-speed connectivity at every location.
• Driving operational efficiency: Fujitec streamlined their employee onboarding by automatically integrating their identity providers (IdPs) with Cloudflare and reducing the need for manual IT configuration.

Strengthening security posture with least-privilege access

Fujitec implemented Cloudflare Access — a core service component of the Cloudflare One SASE platform — to replace their aging VPN infrastructure with a modern zero trust network access (ZTNA) model.

This transition represented a fundamental shift in Fujitec’s security philosophy by moving from a perimeter-based "trust but verify" approach to a strict "never trust, always verify" stance.

Instead of granting broad access to their entire network via a VPN, Fujitec now defines granular access controls for every user and application, including checking for identity by integrating with Google Workspace.

"In the past, the physical VPN equipment itself was a major vulnerability — a single point of failure that created a 'castle-and-moat' risk. If the perimeter was breached, the entire network was exposed," explains Mr. Kitano. "Today, our golden rule is 'least-privilege access.' Cloudflare evaluates every request based on strict identity authentication and device posture checks. We no longer assume a connection is safe just because it’s coming from a known device."

This unified, zero trust approach through Cloudflare ensures that security policies are applied consistently, regardless of where an employee is located.

"By centralizing our security enforcement with Cloudflare, we have finally realized the 'flat world' we envisioned," Kitano continues. "We’ve created an environment that is no longer bound by the physical constraints of location or hardware. Whether our engineers are in a factory in Japan or at a client site overseas, they experience the same high-level of security and seamless access."

Migrating over 3,300 users within 45 days

The most striking outcome of the project was the speed of implementation. Faced with a looming deadline to deploy Cloudflare within days or face a potential 32% increase in licensing costs with their incumbents, Fujitec executed a high-stakes migration at record speed.

While a global rollout of this scale had taken months with other vendors, Fujitec completed the migration for 99% of eligible employees in Japan in just approximately 40 days, and achieved 100% completion in approximately 45 days. This rapid deployment across 3,300 workers established a secure foundation without disrupting daily operations.

"Cloudflare’s platform is incredibly intuitive; there were almost no technical hurdles," says Mr. Ryuhei Tsuji, -Information Systems Department, DIGITAL INNOVATION HQ . "In the past, we spent dozens of hours every month managing hundreds of VPN accounts and physical hardware. With Cloudflare’s single console and IdP integration, that overhead has vanished. Troubleshooting is no longer a complex investigation — it’s now fast and transparent, allowing our team to focus on strategic digital transformation initiatives instead of routine maintenance."

A "revolutionary" global user experience

By leveraging the scale and automated routing of Cloudflare’s global network, Fujitec has transformed the user experience for their international teams. For engineers in remote locations and business travelers, the change was immediate.

"Previously, opening an internal portal or client site from abroad could take minutes, and downloading large datasets could take an entire day," notes Kitano. "Now, web pages open instantly, and downloads are finished in minutes. Whether in a hotel or in transit, our teams perform as if they are sitting in the Tokyo office. Our frequent travelers have given us extremely high praise — they can connect securely and at high speeds without even thinking about it."

Furthermore, Fujitec has solved a long-standing pain point in Internet browsing. Previous web filtering vendors frequently misidentified and blocked legitimate Japanese websites. By switching to Cloudflare Gateway for DNS filtering, Fujitec ensures those domains are correctly categorized and eliminates accidental blocks.

Eliminating silos and empowering IT

Before Cloudflare, network security at Fujitec was dependent on a few specialists. Troubleshooting a connection issue or security alert meant manually cross-referencing logs across three or four point solutions. This fragmentation delayed resolution and reinforced operational silos.

By consolidating security and networking into a single dashboard, Fujitec has transformed how their IT team operates.

"By bringing together ZTNA, DNS filtering, network firewall, and other services into a single pane of glass with Cloudflare, we have turned specialized knowledge into a 'common language' for the entire team," says Tsuji. "We are now building an environment where anyone with fundamental network knowledge can identify root causes quickly. This visibility frees our department from the constant pressure of routine maintenance, allowing us to shift our resources toward innovation projects that truly drive the business forward."

A strategic foundation for the future of urban mobility

For Fujitec, this migration is a catalyst for broader transformation. The company views Cloudflare as a strategic pillar to further reduce operational risks and accelerate their global growth.

"The greatest appeal of Cloudflare is their scalability; the platform grows and evolves as our business grows," conclude Kitano and Tsuji. "In the next phase, we are planning a company-wide rollout to mobile devices and smartphones that have completed verification. We also plan to leverage Cloudflare WAF to protect our global web assets and explore AI-driven defenses to ensure we can adopt new technologies safely and efficiently."

By polishing their "defensive security" to an ironclad standard, Fujitec continues to maximize their business agility. Powered by the Cloudflare connectivity cloud, Fujitec continues to evolve, ensuring that the urban functions of tomorrow — the elevators and escalators that people rely on every day — remain safe, secure, and seamless for everyone.