Fortinet has announced significant additions to their Secure Access Architecture of wired and wireless networking solutions, merging advanced security with enterprise access layers to provide seamless protections from Internet of Things to the Cloud.
“As more BYOD along with millions of new IoT devices attach to corporate networks, defending the access layer is now critical,” says John Maddison senior vice president of products and solutions, Fortinet. “Applying a fabric approach to enable network segmentation while embedding security within access networks is the only way to secure this rapidly expanding attack surface. The Fortinet Secure Access Architecture enables customers to deliver high speed access and security in a single, integrated solution.”
Fortinet expands its Security Fabric with 14 new products to broaden its Secure Access Architecture solutions that weave together advanced security with the access layers to provide protections across the expanding attack surface.
Secure Access Architecture solutions offer universal management and policy controls that simplify administration across wired and wireless infrastructures, enabling segmentation of devices from critical data.
These flexible access solutions offer options for on premise or hosted deployments, controller or controller-less management, and technologies like 802.11ac Wave II speeds to suit the access and security needs for enterprises of all sizes.
IoT Is Already Here, and So Are the Threats
This year alone, Gartner forecasts that 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020. Fortinet’s own survey results show that 76% of global enterprises already have IoT equipment in use within their business.
While a majority of businesses are already leveraging the advantages of connected IoT devices, 92% of security professionals are concerned about the security challenges posed by these billions of devices. Many of these devices are “headless” offering few or no security or management controls. This has exponentially increased the attack surface and left IT struggling to manage IoT devices using complex architectures consisting of numerous point solutions.
Fortinet’s Security Fabric Interweaves Security with Access Networks
Fortinet says the Secure Access Architecture solutions are “intelligently” unified within its Security Fabric through FortiOS. This enables the individual components to act and respond as one – all managed through a single pane of glass and leveraging a single source of security updates.
These advanced and intuitive capabilities arm IT with universal visibility and control over IoT devices and how they interact with critical enterprise networks, says the company.
The new enhancements include:
- Secure Access Applications– Enables guest access, presence, application visibility, device onboarding and more.
- Secure Access Authentication– Automates guest and employee device onboarding, single-sign on, certificate management and more.
- FortiManager Secure Access – Offering choice at the access layer with controller, controller-less, cloud, multi-channel, and single-channel deployment modes.
- FortiGate Enterprise Firewall – Portfolio of network security appliances offering integrated cybersecurity protection at the access layer.
- FortiWLC Wireless Controllers– Infrastructure (Standalone) and Integrated Controllers provide flexible deployment options. Our new powerful Infrastructure Controllers FortiWLC 50D, 200D and 500D supports 50, 200 and 500 access points and 802.11ac Wave 2 performance requirements, while supporting more devices.
- FortiSwitch Secure Access– Encompasses a wide range of high-performance, cost-effective access and data center switches, like Fortinet’s FortiSwitch FS-224D-FPOE and FS-548D-FPOE, which offers 24 and 48 port PoE (Power over Ethernet) support an range of 10 Gigabit Ethernet data center switches with universal management through FortiGate appliances.
- FortiAP Access Points – A selection of enterprise access points, featuring new 802.11ac Wave enterprise APs and support for all deployment options including controller, controller-less and cloud managed options, suitable for indoor and outdoor use-cases.