Cyber Security
Fortinet’s security transformation plans Being successful in digital transformation requires a step change in cyber security
By Tony Campbell EDITOR
A
t the annual partner conference in Las Vegas, dubbed Accelerate 18, Fortinet showed off their latest products and new features built into FortiOS 6.0. This is the first major release in three years of Fortinet’s proprietary network and security operating system and brings enhanced network visibility, automated threat detection and threat mitigation, as well as a complete SD-WAN implementation included in the base license cost. This is a big deal for Fortinet customers, since they could potentially use their existing investment to build a software defined wide area network and ditch their expensive telco-provisioned MPLS network, thus saving thousands of dollars. By raising the bar with FortiOS 6.0, Fortinet hopes to assist their channel partners and MSSP partners, on multiple levels against their rival service providers, helping both parties take valuable market share. Furthermore, each new feature is woven into Fortinet’s security fabric, so the telemetry from each product can orchestrate incident response actions across the fabric.
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Keynote Themes Digital transformation was a core theme across the entire conference. Ken Xie, Fortinet’s founder and CEO, discussed his company’s evolution since the early days of Unified Threat Management (UTM) in 2002, to 2016 when the security fabric was introduced. At each company inflection point, Fortinet anticipated the needs of the market and changed course accordingly. By 2016, enterprise technology was going through a renaissance period, with organisations pivoting to on-demand consumption models, and with hybrid cloud becoming the norm, Fortinet needed to again change course. Two major changes in business technology required resolutions in the security fabric to help modern businesses stay safe. The move to public and hybrid cloud means organisations no longer have a perimeter that is well-defined, so a way to protect information, wherever it is, needed to be introduced. Furthermore, the interconnectedness of IT and OT environments, and the