Press Release

Accelerate 2023

Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet

“In the next decade, secure networking will overtake networking and emerge as the predominant market to support the immense processing power requirements of secure connectivity. Fortinet was founded over 20 years ago with the goal of converging networking and security into secure networking solutions. Today we’re deepening unified management and analytics across our secure networking portfolio to give CIOs unprecedented levels of visibility and enforcement across their entire environment—whether on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid of both.”

News Summary 

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today announced new innovations enabling unified management and analytics across its secure networking portfolio. CIOs today must contend with highly complex, disparate environments, and Fortinet delivers game-changing visibility and enforcement across all secure networking elements, including Hybrid Mesh Firewall, Single-Vendor SASE, Universal ZTNA, Secure SD-WAN, and Secure WLAN/LAN.

Secure Networking Expands with New Hybrid Mesh Firewall

Today’s networks are complex hybrid environments that extend across many edges, which is leading most organizations to shift to a secure networking approach that converges security and networking. An emerging component of secure networking is Hybrid Mesh Firewalls. According to Gartner®, “Hybrid Mesh Firewall platforms enable security policy controls to be defined and enforced between workloads, and between users and workloads connected on any network in on-premises first organizations.”¹ Gartner anticipates “by 2026, more than 60 percent of organizations will have more than one type of firewall deployment, which will prompt adoption of hybrid mesh firewalls.”²

Because of Fortinet’s unique converged approach, we've already been delivering on the concept of Hybrid Mesh Firewalls to customers for years and are taking things one step further with unified management and analytics across not just Hybrid Mesh Firewalls but our entire secure networking portfolio.

Cut Through Complexity with Unified Management and Analytics Across the Entire Hybrid Network

‪FortiManager is Fortinet’s centralized management solution that covers the enterprise network across FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall deployments (both on-premises and in the cloud), as well as Secure SD-WAN, Secure WLAN/LAN, and Universal ZTNA. With today’s news, FortiManager now integrates with FortiSASE, Fortinet’s Single-Vendor SASE solution, making Fortinet the only vendor delivering consistent security, management, and analytics across the entire hybrid network.

Additionally, Fortinet is now introducing new updates across its secure networking portfolio and FortiOS 7.4, including:

Hybrid Mesh Firewall for Data Center and Cloud

• FortiGate 7080F is a new series of next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) that eliminates point products, reduces complexity, and delivers higher performance through purpose-built ASIC technology and AI/ML-powered advanced security. It delivers a Security Compute Rating of 5x faster NGFW firewall performance, 2x faster IPSec VPN throughput, and 2x better threat protection, all while being 73% more energy efficient per Gbps of firewall throughput compared to the industry standard.
• FortiFlex is a new points-based consumption program with support for Hybrid Mesh Firewall deployments and a variety of products, such as virtual machines, FortiGate appliances, and SaaS-based services, among others.

Secure SD-WAN for Branch Offices

• Fortinet Secure SD-WAN enables consistent security and superior user experience for business-critical applications, whether in the cloud, the data center, or on-premises, and supports a seamless transition to single-vendor SASE. We believe it’s because of these features that Fortinet was named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SD-WAN for the third year in a row.³ New enhancements unveiled today include automation in overlay orchestration to accelerate site deployments and a redesign of the monitoring map view to provide global WAN status for each site.

Single-Vendor SASE for Remote Users and Branch Offices

• Fortinet’s Single-Vendor SASE solution, FortiSASE, converges cloud-delivered security and networking to simplify operations across hybrid networks. As part of today’s news, FortiSASE now integrates with FortiManager, allowing unified policy management for Secure SD-WAN and SASE along with unmatched visibility across on-premises and remote users.

Universal ZTNA for Remote Users and Campus Locations

• Fortinet Universal ZTNA provides the industry’s most flexible zero-trust application access control no matter where the user or application is located, and new enhancements now deliver user-based risk scoring as part of our continuous checks for ongoing application access.

WLAN/LAN for Branch Offices and Campus Locations

• FortiAP, our family of industry-leading, secure WLAN Access Points, can now integrate with Fortinet’s Single-Vendor SASE solution, marking the industry’s first AP integration with SASE. This enables secure micro-branches where an AP is deployed to send traffic to a FortiSASE solution and ensure comprehensive security of all devices at the site.

Supporting Quotes

“The rise of digital transformation and work-from-anywhere has made supporting and securing applications and employees at different locations critical for businesses. As organizations aim to simplify their environments, the market for integrated and secure networking solutions continues to grow. Fortinet has set itself apart by providing a single management platform across its secure networking portfolio for multi-cloud and hybrid environments. In our latest Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) quarterly report, Fortinet is ranked as one of the top three vendors¹ in a market that grew over 40% year-over-year in 2022.”⁴ – Chris DePuy, Technology Analyst – 650 Group

“Our mission has always been to translate our customers’ complex technology needs into practical solutions, and Fortinet helps us do just this. Fortinet’s transformation from an industry-leading firewall provider to a well-rounded secure networking vendor has created a painless journey for our customers as they address changing business needs with new solutions like SD-WAN and SASE. With this announcement, Fortinet is continuing to add capabilities our customers need and is strengthening our ability to provide simplified, efficient secure networking solutions to our clients.” – Neil Anderson, AVP, Cloud & Infrastructure Solutions – World Wide Technology

Fortinet Accelerate 2023

Accelerate is Fortinet's annual customer and partner conference taking place April 3-6, 2023. Visit Fortinet’s LinkedIn company profile on April 4th to live stream the keynotes, which will dive into today’s secure networking news, as well as new innovations across the Fortinet Security Fabric.

Additional Resources

• Read more about today’s Accelerate news and the benefits of consolidation and convergence in this blog post.
• Read about updates to Fortinet’s NSE Certification program and more about the Fortinet Training Institute’s momentum here.
• Learn about Fortinet’s free cybersecurity training, which includes broad cyber awareness and product training. As part of the Fortinet Training Advancement Agenda (TAA), the Fortinet Training Institute also provides training and certification through the Network Security Expert (NSE) Certification, Academic Partner, and Education Outreach programs. 
• Learn more about FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence and research and Outbreak Alerts, which provide timely steps to mitigate breaking cybersecurity attacks. 
• Learn more about Fortinet’s FortiGuard Security Services portfolio.  
• Read about how Fortinet customers are securing their organizations. 
• Follow Fortinet on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Subscribe to Fortinet on our blog or YouTube.  

¹ Gartner, Hype Cycle for Workload and Network Security, Charlie Winckless, 18 July 2022.

² Gartner, Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls, Rajpreet Kaur, Adam Hils, Tom Lintemuth, 19 December 2022.

³ Gartner, Magic Quadrant for SD-WAN, Jonathan Forest, Naresh Singh, Andrew Lerner, Karen Brown, 12 September 2022.

⁴ Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Market Surges over 40% Y/Y in 2022; According to 650 Group, 27 March, 2023.

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