Security shouldn’t be an obstacle to performance: Fortinet
Security is an easy thing to talk about, but is difficult to deliver on, according to Fortinet vice-president in the chief technology officer’s office, Darren Turnbull. He told ARN the company will be increasing its security play, especially around segmentation firewall.
“Moving forward, we want to have more emphasis on the segmentation firewall. It’s this notion of having a very high level of more firewalls in your infrastructure. You want to do that because you’re containing the risk and you want to know what exactly is happening in the network.
“You want to stop breaches when they happen and how businesses manage that will become more important,” he said.
Turnbull indicated many businesses in the security space face problems with the firewall policy set that they have because it’s not easy to manage that policy set.
“Managing that policy set takes a great deal of discipline. Understanding which rules are valid or not, when they expire, when they should be provisioned or de-provisioned, etc. presents a lot of challenges.
“Adding more firewalls potentially is magnifying the challenge. So building up the proposition is where were looking at going into the new year,” he indicated.
According to Turnbull, in terms of investment, the company’s growth has given it more touchpoints in reaching out to the channel and empowering the channel to understand what this complex proposition.
As such, Fortinet will be amplifying the education of the channel when it comes to technologies it’s due to launch.
“Nobody’s ever come to me asking for a slower network. There’s a realisation that a perfectly secure network is also an impossible dream. Looking at what you do, how you control it, how you manage, view, and react to that challenge is going to become more important.
“No one will believe a company anymore that says – if you install this box, you’re totally secure. Because breaches are occurring every time and it’s not always because these companies are stupid; they’re targeted by clever people that understand how things work,” he said.
“So, managing that risk with technology and process will become much more realistic and this is the direction Fortinet’s working towards in future. You don’t want security getting in the way of your business, which is where the channel plays a role,” Turnbull mentioned.
Turnbull also said the company’s recent acquisition of Meru Networks will boost its play on the wireless side as a one-size, one approach doesn’t suit every business’ needs.
“We now have three different threads to wireless security. We have an integrated model, which is essentially having Fortigate with either an integral access point or connecting access point to it; and a Cloud option that enables access points to the Cloud.
“With the Meru acquisition, we have an infrastructure – a wireless play. Having the Meru acquisition will compliment what we already offer with wireless, especially for large, complex deployments like football stadiums, university campuses, and hospitals,” he added.
Fortinet has also recently integrated its FortiSandbox technology into its email security solution, FortiMail; its Web application firewall technology, FortiWeb; and its FortiGate firewall technology.
