CRN Exclusive: Fortinet Launches New FortiOS, Security Operations Solution

Fortinet is building on its Security Fabric vision, announcing the launch of a new FortiOS and security operations solution on Tuesday at its Accelerate 2017 conference in Las Vegas.

FortiOS 5.6 expands Fortinet's Security Fabric to include more products, including the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company's switches, access points, analyzer and sandbox solutions. The OS previously only included Fortinet's firewall and endpoint portfolios. The company said it would also soon be adding new partners in February.

Fortinet said the new OS also includes a new user interface, security recommendations, expanded visibility and an open API ecosystem.

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John Maddison, Fortinet senior vice president of products and solutions, said the updated security operating system allows partners to "provide a complete solution set" across enterprise firewalls, ATP and the cloud. He said it also better positions partners to offer integrated solutions and provide recommendations on how to improve their security posture.

Fortinet also rolled out the Fortinet Security Operations Solution, which is comprised of the FortiSIEM (from Fortinet's June acquisition of AccelOps), FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager, allowing it to look across Fortinet infrastructure as well as threat intelligence feeds and logs from third-party vendors. Maddison said the new solution is Fortinet's first dive into the SOC (security operations center) world, looking to bring together the network and security operations centers into a single solution set.

"We think, long term, the integration of the NOC [network operations center] and the SOC will be really important to track threats from a security perspective and deal with them on the networking side," Maddison said.

The launches add to the Security Fabric vision that Fortinet has been building since April, bringing together its network security offerings into a single architecture and unified security platform. Vice President of Americas Channels and Enhanced Technologies Joe Sykora said that partners had responded very positively to the Security Fabric messaging and solutions.

"In security, we've got all these things hitting us and our partners have so many different things that are giving them actionable items. Security isn't simple, but we are simplifying what needs to be acted on as fast as possible," Sykora said.

Sykora said the two new product launches, in particular, will help partners by allowing them to offer something "not everyone can offer."

"This is where the big opportunity is for partners … The Security Fabric introduces a whole new level of solutions for our partners and we will just keep building on that … This will provide end-to-end security management for our partners," Sykora said.

Over the long term, Maddison said Fortinet plans to continue expanding the Security Fabric. The ultimate goal is to create what Maddison called "intent-based network security," under which it could take business language and automatically translate that into network security policies and actions.