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Every day, networks continue to expand, further fragmenting the traditional edges at the data center, WAN, and LAN with things like off-network devices, distributed compute, multi-cloud, converged OT networks, LTE and 5G, the internet, and most recently, the home edge. And at the same time, huge sections of the workforce have now transitioned to working from home. These mobile and remote employees need the same fast access to information, high-performance applications, instant collaboration, and customized experiences as people in the office.
The proliferation of all of these new and unique edge environments has made today’s networks increasingly difficult to secure. Cybercriminals are exploiting the fact that the approach many organizations have taken to security has been haphazard and piece-meal, without any unifying security strategy or framework. Often, organizations rely on a variety of isolated security tools that are designed to protect a specific function or segment of the network, but without any cohesive framework. Cybercriminals are taking advantage of this fragmented security strategy and employing increasingly sophisticated malware to steal data, corrupt systems, and even disrupt the economy.
Another side effect of the vendor and solutions sprawl is that maintaining network-wide visibility and consistent policy enforcement is almost impossible. In a recent survey, organizations reported deploying an average of 45 different solutions and threat events needed to be coordinated by at least 19 different devices. Even simply maintaining and monitoring all the various security solutions in place is taxing already overburdened IT staff.
Security Everywhere
Clearly, security needs to be everywhere, but it’s complex to build a dynamic and responsive network and then add security on top of it that can keep up. It’s even more difficult when organizations are using legacy solutions and strategies. The concept of security-driven networking is based on the idea that networking and security shouldn’t be siloed. They should be integrated into an IT infrastructure that takes into account the network, the end points and devices, and the cloud and applications, end-to-end. By weaving security and networking together, security no longer functions as an overlay. Instead, it is deeply aware of networking functions and can adjust configurations, policies, and protocols on the fly to ensure continuous protection and consistent enforcement.
For two decades at Fortinet, we’ve been focused on developing solutions that are designed to cover the entire attack surface. Most people in cybersecurity are familiar with the kill chain. It starts with reconnaissance, it looks at weaponization, delivery, exploitation, installation, command and control, and action objectives. But today, you need to be able to consider those elements across the entire attack surface and be able to stop the kill chain at any one of these points, anywhere in the network.
What’s in a Name?
Because the attack surface is so extensive, organizations are beginning to look into deploying integrated solutions or platforms. But what does that actually mean? Many security manufacturers talk about platforms, but they use the term in so many different ways that it can be somewhat vague. For the most part, the security industry has failed to deliver the kinds of platforms and services that today’s changing networks require. Instead, most security vendors are focused on delivering a single slice of security.
With that said, a carefully crafted platform can offer distinct advantages in terms of deploying, managing, and running security solutions. At Fortinet, our goal has been to create the broadest platform possible built around deeply integrated solutions that support the performance and automation needs of today’s digital businesses. The result is the Fortinet Security Fabric, an integrated platform that is designed to span the extended network while providing consistent security and performance across all edges.
Core to any effective platform is a common foundation, and Fortinet’s operating system, FortiOS, is the foundation of the Fortinet Security Fabric. It ties all of the security and networking components together to ensure tight integration throughout the entire infrastructure, including hybrid deployments of hardware, software, and X-as-a-Service versions of the platform.
This approach enables security to keep pace with networking and security changes. It also provides holistic visibility across the entire network, correlating and analyzing data from distributed networking and security devices. Working with all of the various connected systems, deployed everywhere across the network, it can better detect threats and launch coordinated responses to cyberattacks.
As a result, security solutions can be deployed anywhere, regardless of their form factor or the network they run on, and still see each other, share threat intelligence, and coordinate a unified response to threats. And because the fabric is based on common standards and open APIs, hundreds of solutions from third-party vendors can be integrated into the platform, helping ensure that organizations can use their existing investments to ensure security is deployed consistently to every corner of their network.
Because cyberattacks can happen faster than any human can respond, security systems need to not only detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real-time, but also monitor the network to ensure that connections are stable, applications are optimized, and dynamic changes don’t create security gaps that expose companies to unnecessary risk. To ensure the best possible response times, advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning also need to be part of any effective security platform, enabling it to see, respond to and even anticipate needs at digital speeds.
Address Security Challenges Now and In the Future
Many organizations are driving towards a platform approach, but a platform needs to take everything into account versus focusing on just one area. A platform can’t be just a platform for endpoints, or a platform in the network, or a platform across the cloud. It needs to be a platform across all areas of the network, working consistently end-to-end, and that is augmented using identity and threat intelligence.
This platform approach, built on a common, universal foundation, enables multiple security technologies to work together seamlessly across all environments. It protects the organization based on a single source of unified threat intelligence, eliminating security gaps in the network and improving responses to attacks and breaches. And because an effective platform can also run natively in any environment, it empowers the distributed security fabric to span and adapt to the extended and expanding digital attack surface for broad, integrated, and automated protection of devices, data, and applications.
Discover how FortiOS, the heart of the Fortinet Security Fabric, enables consistent security across all networks, endpoints, and clouds.