Short Summary: New threats arise as networks grow, and companies respond by adding new security products in a piecemeal fashion. The result is a patchwork of stitched-together systems rather than a well-crafted, strategically architected solution.
Securing computer networks is far more complex today that it used to be. Internet of Things (IoT) devices add unseen access points to networks, while the cloud and BYOD practices move access points outside network boundaries.
New threats arise as networks grow, and companies respond by adding new security products in a piecemeal fashion. The result is a patchwork of stitched-together systems rather than a well-crafted, strategically architected solution.
Patchwork Security Is Poor Security
All too often, a patchwork security approach is complex, difficult to manage, and frankly, frightening. Products don’t interoperate and are not easy to manage in a centralized way. Security products aren’t optimized because companies don’t have the resources to understand and support them fully; so companies end up disabling certain features in these tools when they don’t know how they’ll impact network performance or end users.
At the end of the day, product benefits and efficiencies are lost, leaving companies with dangerous gaps in their overall security.
Tightly Woven Fabric Of Security Closes Security Gaps
You can help your customers solve those problems by recommending Fortinet’s ground-breaking approach to seamlessly integrating different security products and functions. Called the “Security Fabric,” it’s a powerful architecture that simplifies security management and enhances overall network visibility by weaving together the loose threads that hinder the performance of patchwork security platforms.
Fortinet, our partner, created the Security Fabric to relieve customers of the struggles of getting separate security products to interoperate and trying to manage them in a cohesive way. To help customers overcome these challenges, Fortinet designed the fabric with a number of goals in mind, including:
- Enabling security devices to easily collaborate, share threat intelligence and coordinate incident response actions
- Segmenting networks and quarantining threats to achieve comprehensive traffic visibility and contain risk
- Centrally coordinating security policy across, in and out of network environments — from the cloud to the data center to mobile and on premise endpoints
The security fabric architecture achieves these goals by improving 5 core security capabilities:
- Scalability: Protection that is both broad, scaling from internal networks to the cloud, and deep, scaling to address traffic volumes and meet performance demands.
- Awareness: Seamless interoperability between security devices that now function as a single entity. These devices take a deep look at the network’s traffic, not only when it enters an organization’s network, but also as data moves within the network to improve detection of advanced persistent threats.
- Security: Easier sharing of real-time threat intelligence across all security devices, by enabling them to work together and be managed in a holistic way.
- Actionable: Shared intelligence doesn’t add to security if it can’t be acted upon. By coordinating information from Fortinet’s big data systems with local network data, threat information can be correlated to local circumstances and lead to a meaningful response.
- Open: Through the use of APIs, other vendors can integrate their security products into the Security Fabric, extending its capabilities without complicating management.
Upgrade Customers to a Simpler Security Solution
As a partner of Fortinet, you can help customers that already use Fortinet security solutions upgrade to the Security Fabric to optimize their effectiveness — and introduce the benefits of Fortinet’s holistic approach to cybersecurity to new customers. With its flexible, open architecture, it will support your customers as new threats arise and their security needs change.
Fine Tec is a value-added distributor of Fortinet network security solutions. Contact us to learn more about why Fortinet’s Security Fabric is the answer to your customers’ patchwork security blues.