As security architectures become more interconnected and operationally complex, many organizations struggle to find consulting partners with sufficient senior-level depth. Expertise is often spread thinly across teams, making it difficult to scale architecture quality, troubleshooting, and long-term operational consistency. Fortinet partner 2F-IT GmbH addresses that challenge by treating technical expertise not as a set of individual achievements, but as integral to how the company operates.

The German IT security firm has built its business around the Fortinet ecosystem, with a strong focus on mid-market organizations, public-sector customers, critical infrastructure operators, and large enterprises. That specialization has helped establish 2F-IT as one of Germany’s most experienced Fortinet-focused security consultancies, a position shaped by both its services and the depth of expertise it has developed.

A key part of that model is 2F-IT’s team of four NSE 8-certified consultants. Together, they represent more than 10% of the company’s staff, giving 2F-IT the highest concentration of Fortinet NSE 8 expertise in Germany. For customers, that density matters because complex Fortinet environments are designed, implemented, and supported by practitioners who operate at the highest technical level within the Fortinet certification program.

Building Around Fortinet Specialization

2F-IT’s specialization strategy began with co-founder and CEO Swjatoslav Cicer, who earned his NSE 8 in August 2016, when the certification was still new and relatively rare in Germany. His path into IT security was shaped by hands-on technical training, military experience, and an operational mindset that emphasized execution under pressure. After leaving the German Federal Armed Forces, he entered IT security consulting and completed a wide range of certifications from multiple vendors before focusing on Fortinet.

That decision ultimately shaped the company. Rather than remaining a generic multivendor security house, 2F-IT built its business around Fortinet technologies. Swjatoslav viewed that focus as a way to deepen technical capabilities, create clearer market differentiation, and build a team capable of consistently handling demanding customer environments.

Today, Swjatoslav spends most of his time leading the company, shaping its market position, and building partnerships, while staying close enough to the technology to supervise large customer projects and remain involved with key accounts. That balance reflects the company’s broader philosophy: leadership matters, but technical credibility must remain connected to real customer delivery.

As Swjatoslav explains: “I went after NSE 8 in 2016, when the certification was still new, because I needed to know I could stand at that level myself before I could ask my team to. Today, four of us hold it—more than 10% of the company. That concentration is what helped establish 2F-IT as one of Germany’s most specialized Fortinet partners, and that’s what our customers actually experience when they hand us their most critical infrastructure.”

Expert Density as an Operating Model

At many organizations, advanced certifications are treated primarily as individual milestones. At 2F-IT, they are part of a broader operating model.

Having four NSE 8-certified consultants within a dedicated Fortinet practice transforms the flow of expertise in the company. These senior consultants are not just isolated specialists brought in for the most difficult issues. They are part of the company’s delivery framework, mentoring other team members, influencing architectural choices, supporting complex deployments, and helping to establish technical standards that enhance overall team performance.

That density also gives 2F-IT greater flexibility in supporting customers. Complex environments do not rely on a single expert or a single escalation path. Instead, the company can draw on multiple practitioners with deep expertise in Fortinet architectures and experience spanning design, migration, deployment, troubleshooting, and customer operations.

For customers, this translates into more than technical reassurance. It can affect project quality, speed, and resilience. Experienced NSE 8 consultants can often recognize architectural issues more quickly, identify root causes more efficiently, and design Fortinet Security Fabric architectures built to operate at scale rather than merely pass implementation checkpoints.

The Mentorship Flywheel

2F-IT’s concentration of NSE 8 talent did not happen by accident. The company has built a mentorship ecosystem designed to help consultants advance into more senior roles while ensuring that certification preparation is grounded in real operational experience.

Consultants pursuing NSE 8 gain access to dedicated virtual lab environments, mentoring from current NSE 8s, and exposure to complex customer projects across the Fortinet Security Fabric. The company also covers training and exam voucher costs and supports participation in Fortinet Xpert Academy workshops when possible. Beyond cost coverage, 2F-IT also pays a dedicated bonus to NSE 8 holders for as long as they keep the certification active and recertify, making expert-level commitment a structural part of the company’s investment in its team.

The key point is that these elements work together. A lab environment lets consultants practice under realistic conditions. Mentorship gives them access to people who understand both the exam path and the field realities behind it. Customer projects provide the practical experience needed to understand how Fortinet technologies perform in complex environments. Over time, that combination creates a flywheel: experienced experts help develop future experts, and each new expert strengthens the environment that supports the next.

Swjatoslav is clear that the company encourages and supports the path but does not force it. NSE 8 requires individual discipline, and motivation must come from the consultant. 2F-IT’s role is to create the conditions that make that level of growth possible and productive.

Why Customers Care

The customer impact of 2F-IT’s model comes down to depth. Customers are not simply looking for consultants who know Fortinet products. They need teams that can understand business requirements, design resilient architectures, manage migrations, troubleshoot under pressure, and support environments where downtime or misconfiguration carries significant risk.

Their environments often operate under complex requirements, including regulatory expectations, legacy infrastructure, hybrid environments, and high-availability needs. 

In those settings, specialization matters. A Fortinet-focused practice with a high concentration of NSE 8 expertise brings pattern recognition and architectural judgment that are difficult to replicate in broader, less specialized consulting models. Consultants who repeatedly work across the Fortinet ecosystem develop a deeper understanding of how systems interact, where architectures are likely to fail, and how to design environments that remain manageable over time.

That is the practical value of the competence center model. At 2F-IT, expertise is treated not as a credential on paper but as a customer-delivery capability reflected in architectural quality, implementation discipline, troubleshooting speed, and long-term operational stability.

Four Experts, Shared Standards

The four NSE 8 consultants at 2F-IT bring different backgrounds to that operating model.

Their combined experience provides 2F-IT with a robust technical team that enhances delivery, fosters mentorship, and transforms Fortinet expertise into broader organizational capability.

Specialization as Business Strategy

For 2F-IT, Fortinet specialization is a business strategy, not merely a technical preference. By building around a single ecosystem, the company has strengthened internal mentorship, developed more consistent technical practices, and created a delivery model tailored to complex customer environments.

That model also supports long-term talent development. Consultants are not expected to spread themselves thin across unrelated vendor platforms. Instead, they build depth within the Fortinet Security Fabric while learning directly from colleagues who have already achieved expert-level certification and operational experience. That combination gives 2F-IT a repeatable way to develop senior talent within a focused practice.

The result is a consulting organization where expertise compounds rather than disperses. For customers, that means working with a team built around the technologies they rely on most. For 2F-IT, it creates a clear identity: a security consultancy built on concentrated Fortinet expertise and a deliberate model for developing more of it.

Learn more: To mark the 10-year milestone of NSE 8, Fortinet has released a new ebook, Becoming a Fortinet NSE 8: Profiling the Journeys of Cybersecurity’s Top Experts. This ebook looks beyond the exams to the experience, discipline, and real-world problem-solving skills that define expert-level cybersecurity practitioners.

You can also explore the Fortinet NSE Certification program to learn more about each certification level, how the program is structured, and how to begin or continue your own path toward advanced cybersecurity expertise.