Tell us a bit about Fortinet - your history and offering?
Fortinet, which was founded in 2000 with its HQ in the heart of Silicon Valley in Sunnyvale, California is one of the top “pure play” security companies in the world. Beginning with our flagship firewall product, FortiGate, Fortinet has expanded to include all of the security technologies that are needed for a comprehensive security architecture, placing the right technology in the right place anywhere in a network and in the cloud.
What challenges are enterprises currently facing? How does your solution tackle this?
One of the biggest challenges enterprises face today is keeping pace with the constantly changing cyber-attacks that they face daily. Traditionally organizations would have adopted a “point product” approach, taking different products from different vendors and trying to manage such a complex environment themselves. Fortinet’s approach to this problem, the Fortinet Security Fabric, is a broad, integrated and automated security architecture. All of the different technologies that make up the Fortinet Security Fabric are designed to work together, collaborating and sharing information in real time to minimize complexity and increase security efficacy.
Fortinet is one of the world’s biggest security companies. What security concerns are there around SD-WAN deployments and how can these be tackled?
The biggest issue with nearly all of the SD-WAN solutions on the market today is the lack of attention/detail given to security. The biggest security concern is the expansion of the digital attack surface by increasing the number of connections to the Internet, potentially one for each remote site. Each one of these is a potential “open door” to the enterprise. Without the appropriate security technologies deployed at each of these sites, any benefit from using SD-WAN will be lost, not to mention the financial and reputational damage that accompanies a data breach especially in the GDPR era.
Should enterprises move to SD-WAN? Why?
SD-WAN does not fit all enterprises. Moving to SD-WAN or not should be a strategic decision made in light of the potential benefits. However, that decision should be made with the full understanding of the security implications and a plan of how to secure this new technology and environment.
Can you tell us about any partnerships or recent deployments you’ve been involved with?
Fortinet’s SD-WAN is the only solution with embedded Security and SD-WAN within By adding SD-WAN to the world’s most widely deployed next generation firewall, the use of SD-WAN is seamless, simple and cost effective without any additional licensing necessary. We have a strong uptake from mid to large distributed enterprises implementing our Secure SD-WAN. We have implemented one of the largest Secure SD-WAN deployments at a financial institute in North America with over 12,000 branches and a large retail in Europe with hundreds of shops. And these are just two examples.
How does your offering stand out in a growing and evolving enterprise market?
Because SD-WAN is a feature of FortiGate, the enterprise can benefit from the seamless, end-to-end protection and visibility provided by the Fortinet Security Fabric across the whole of the network.
