Fortinet has already been beefing up its SASE platform with their WLAN portfolio, and the newest version extends that, providing more support for microbranches and related devices and for DLP, and introducing digital experience monitoring to the SASE platform for the first time
Chris Boland, Consulting Systems Expert at Fortinet Canada.
Cybersecurity vendor Fortinet has announced multiple improvements to their single-vendor SASE offering. Their FortiSASE now includes expanded integrations within the Fortinet WLAN portfolio to further support organizations securing microbranches and related devices. Their existing data loss prevention [DLP] service has been enhanced. Their digital experience monitoring [DEM] is also being integrated with FortiSASE.
“This release demonstrates the integration we can bring to FortiSASE as a product,” said Chris Boland, Consulting Systems Expert at Fortinet Canada. “I’ve been working on this for three years, and seeing these products come to fruition is something I’m very excited about.”
The term SASE was coined by Gartner around 2020 to refer to centralized security in the cloud for remote users. The FortiSASE solution is a full SASE offering that provides unified security, simplified management, and end-to-end DEM by seamlessly converging cloud-delivered security—including Secure Web Gateway [SWG], Cloud Access Security Broker [CASB], and Firewall-as-a-Service, as well as networking capabilities with SD-WAN. It also includes Universal ZTNA [Zero Trust Network Access] for robust secure access to and from the internet, privately hosted applications, and SaaS applications.
“We see customers who use our current platform acquire this one to augment it,” Boland said. “It’s based on per user license, so it’s an easy to enhance consumption model. It’s very easy for remote work, which is important these days.”
The expanded integrations within the Fortinet WLAN portfolio now further support organizations securing microbranches and related devices. FortiAP wireless access points intelligently offload traffic from microbranches to a SASE Point of Presence [PoP] for comprehensive security inspection at scale for all devices, including IoT and OT devices. This integration also means Fortinet’s WLAN portfolio can be managed by the same simple, cloud-based management console customers already use for FortiSASE.
“We support OT devices and the plethora of IoT ones that are already on the market, “Boland stated. “Both bringing in FortiAP, combined with the Digital Experience Monitoring that we also are introducing allows greater microbranch support because it lets branches be stood up in smaller places. That means greater flexibility for deployment for IT and OT connectivity. For OT, the FortiAP can be deployed in a small kiosk in a mall up to a larger enterprise.”
FortiSASE had FortiGuard powered DLP service to protect sensitive data across all the entire hybrid environment before, but it has now been enhanced.
“DLP now gives insight over data present in a variety of data types,” Boland said. These include data identifiers, file types, and SaaS applications.
“This service now includes a wider range of data,” he added. “The focus is providing additional visibility for data types, so this is a continued enhancement of services we have already had available.”
The final new integration into FortiSASE is end-to-end digital experience monitoring.
“This is the first introduction of the DEM into the FortiSASE platform at this point,” Boland said. The integration will provide insights across users, Fortinet’s global SASE PoPs, and the performance of SaaS applications, including WebEx, Office365, and DropBox, for comprehensive network and SaaS application monitoring. The integration also offers endpoint monitoring to deliver end-to-end visibility that empowers IT teams with the information they need to reduce resolution times and ensure a positive user experience.
