FORTINET

BUILDING HOLISTIC SECURITY STRATEGIES

Alain Penel, Regional Vice President, Middle East, Fortinet, draws attention to the importance of converging security with networking when devising strategies to enhance cybersecurity postures.

What is the main focus for your company at GITEX 2021?

At GITEX we will showcase the Fortinet Security Fabric platform which delivers broad, integrated, and automated protection across an organisation’s entire digital attack surface to deliver consistent security across all networks, endpoints, and clouds. As part of the Fortinet Security Fabric, we will highlight solutions such as FortiXDR, Fortinet Adaptive Cloud Security Solutions, Secure SDWAN and SASE.

How can customers fast-track their digital transformation ambitions with your solutions?

The proliferation of new devices and edges along with investments in digital innovations continue to expand the digital attack surface. Many organisations are challenged to cybersecurity: zero trust access (ZTA) and zero trust network access (ZTNA).

with protecting across their entire infrastructure as the threat landscape has become much more sophisticated and harder to manage with isolated point products and disparate services. Expanding on the Fortinet Security Fabric’s portfolio, FortiTrust provides organisations a unified services offering to secure across any network, endpoint or cloud with simplified consumption and one licensing model for all form factors. As a result, customers can further protect the growing digital attack surface, securing critical devices, data, applications, and connections from the data center to the cloud to the home office and more.

Which key technologies should customers invest in today to ensure business continuity in the digital era?

With remote work likely here to stay even as offices open up around the world, and with network complexity ever on the rise, IT and security teams must implement zero trust protections and controls to enable robust cybersecurity. With zero trust, no devices are allowed to connect to corporate resources freely. Instead, any user or device requesting access must provide validated credentials. Even then, they are only permitted to access the minimally required resources needed to do their job. By denying all unvalidated traffic by default, bad actors and compromised devices can’t even ping the network to explore its resources, let alone the rest of the network. Organisations must adopt two critical strategies to implement a true zero trust approach

Which aspects of digital transformation are customers not paying adequate attention to?

In today’s evolving environment, any impact on application, network or security performance can have devastating business repercussions. Organisations can no longer leave security as an afterthought or as an overlay in their transformation strategy. An overlay security system constantly struggling to keep up with dynamic changes in the network will introduce security gaps that can be easily exploited. To address these challenges, organisations need to implement a security-driven networking approach that combines networking and security into a holistic solution that can begin protecting any edge the moment it is created. Converging security and networking is fundamental to organisations’ overall security posture.

Can you elaborate on your plans for the regional market over the next few quarters?

Fortinet has been focused on strengthening its position through innovative thinking and strong solutions that help solve enterprises’ network and cybersecurity issues. We will maintain this strategy while adapting our support to suit the needs of customers in the current hybrid working environment. In the region, we see a strong interest for Secure SD-WAN, cloud and OT solutions.