Fortinet Claims to Defend Enterprise Access Networks from IoT to the Cloud

Fortinet 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 IoT (Internet of Things) to the Cloud.

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 sophisticated 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.

Rajesh Maurya, Regional Director, India & SAARC, Fortinet, commented, “As more BYOD along with millions of new IoT devices attach to corporate networks, defending the access layer is now critical. 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.”

Siegfried Unz, director dataservice, Lyoness Group AG, said, “Providing secure internet services for Lyoness’ global shopping community of over 5.3 million members, 60,000 partners, and 1,000 employees across 47 countries requires solutions that are interoperable, easy to implement with existing infrastructure, and on the cutting edge of security. Fortinet has been the right choice for us, with their Secure Access Architecture (SAA) giving the wireless side of our network the same level of broad security as the wired network. With Fortinet’s security and networking focus, SAA eliminates any gaps that could be exploited by hackers or cybercriminals.”

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 has addressed these challenges with its Secure Access Architecture solutions which encompass the entire access infrastructure across wired and wireless networks. These solutions are intelligently unified within Fortinet’s 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.