The hype around AI is real and is unlocking new opportunities for channel partners. Recently, IDC reported that two-thirds of surveyed organizations are already using AI. In Canada, 6.1 per cent of companies use AI to create products or deliver services. One in seven Canadian businesses is using (9.3%) or has plans to use (4.6%) generative AI (GenAI), which helps to process data, identify patterns, and create new or original content. 

As AI becomes more mainstream, organizations will face new challenges, from the development of new use cases, products, and services to dramatic data increases. Channel partners can grow market share by providing the solutions needed to manage, back up, and protect this data and support new business cases. 

Where to start?  

Partners can lead their customers through AI adoption by providing access to integrated solutions that deliver on AI’s promise while ensuring robust information management and security policies.

One way to do this is to align with one vendor offering a consolidated and integrated solution. Fortinet recently unveiled new and expanded GenAI assistant capabilities that address the key benefits of AI solutions, including enhancements to network and security operations, improved and data-driven decision-making, and the ability to simplify complex tasks and decisions for faster threat response. 

These new GenAI assistant capabilities for FortiAI (formerly Fortinet Advisor) expand on the FortiAnalyzer, FortiSIEM, and FortiSOAR solutions, which integrate seamlessly thanks to the Fortinet Security Fabric. 

FortiAnalyzer enables visibility across IT and OT infrastructures, eliminating operational bottlenecks and uncovering actionable data that empowers security teams. The latest release of FortiAI for FortiAnalyzer streamlines network and security operations and amplifies threat analysis and response actions, helping support security teams with automated detection, investigation, and response features.

FortiSOAR enables customers to centralize, standardize, and automate security and network operations. With full SecOps management features, broad integrations, extensive use-case solutions and prebuilt playbooks, FortiSOAR provides foundational security operations center (SOC) automation, complete with alert analysis, GenAI prompts to support analyst activity, forensic logging and privacy enhancements.

Enhancements to FortiSIEM build on its centralized event collection, detection analytics, and incident management to support compliance validation and manage asset and user profiles. 

Fortinet’s commitment to develop and expand FortiAI ensures flexible solutions that can fit a variety of customers, including WAN and LAN infrastructures. FortiAI generative AI functions support OpenAI and Google Bard (FortiSOAR only) cloud engines and can connect to other large language models. By integrating FortiAI into operational workflows, teams can enable conversational access to documentation, resulting in better onboarding, faster provisioning and network design, and streamlined monitoring and troubleshooting. 

Alleviating demands on security and networking teams is one of the key customer benefits of GenAI, as the cybersecurity sector continues to grapple with a global skills gap approaching 4 million professionals. By augmenting teams and reducing the need for technical proficiency, GenAI can help customers do more with less. Fortinet’s GenAI assistant provides support and guidance for security (SecOps) and network operations (NetOps) teams, making them more efficient and more effective. Its intuitive interface allows team members to use natural language, effectively bridging the industry’s skill shortage. 

The natural language assistant in FortiManager can generate scripting based on conversational commands, suggest edits, and validate code to streamline development. In an industry first, it also provides a GenAI IoT security assistant to help detect and troubleshoot IoT vulnerabilities. 

Prioritizing GenAI security.

Channel partners can also support their customers as they secure AI processes and ensure data privacy. For Fortinet, securing AI operations requires a proxy for all AI connections. Centralizing AI traffic through secure proxies helps protect and monitor all data interactions, mitigating risks associated with AI-driven operations such as privacy and copyright. 

Fortinet’s latest FortiAI enhancements make it easier for channel partners to offer secure GenAI solutions that unlock the promise of AI without the risk. With proven solutions backed by decades of experience, partners can provide customers with all the benefits of AI including streamlined processes and operational efficiency, improved decision-making based on data insights, security enhancements and innovative customer experiences. So, what are you waiting for? 

Sean Campbell is Director of Canadian Channels at Fortinet