SMBs are moving to the cloud in droves, with a recent Techaisle survey finding that 94 percent expect to be using some type of software-as-a-service (SaaS) application by year’s end. While those SMBs that move to the cloud are poised to reap several benefits, from costs savings to scalability, they are also opening themselves up to a new range of cyberattacks that threaten to put those benefits – and their company as a whole – at risk. Fortunately, Fortinet has extended its SMB-focused unified threat management platform (UTM) to the cloud, ensuring that your SMB customers can fully protect their SaaS workloads with industry-leading SaaS-ready security.
SAAS on the Rise
Drilling down into the Techaisle numbers further, it becomes readily apparent that many SMBs are becoming cloud-first organizations, with small businesses expecting a 140 percent increase in SaaS usage and mid-market firms increasing their number of SaaS applications by 80 percent. The move makes sense because the cloud is designed specifically to offload the time- and resource-intensive tasks few SMBs can handle in-house while providing the on-demand infrastructure and scalability a growing business needs.
Consequently, many new SMB converts to SaaS are implementing business-critical SaaS apps, including:
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
- Supply chain management
- Inventory management
- Marketing automation
- Customer service
The result is an always-on business in which even far-flung employees and small offices can access enterprise-grade business applications anytime, anywhere.
SMBs Under Fire
All that flexibility, however, comes with a price. As more SMBs put more mission-critical data in the cloud, they also find that they are increasingly targeted by attackers looking for fast, easy scores. In fact, Verizon’s latest Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR) found that attacks on small businesses are on the rise, with 61 percent of all victims that reported a breach last year having fewer than 1,000 employees.
In the past, SMBs could provide their organizations with baseline security using UTM appliances strategically located throughout their environments. Such UTM wares offered SMBs the best of both worlds: strong, flexible networking and security in an easy-to-manage and deploy form factor. But with the move to the cloud, all bets are off as on-premises security solutions no longer have the access or visibility into critical cloud-based workloads.
Cloud-Ready Security
Enter Fortinet’s FortiGate UTM. Fortinet recently expanded its FortiCloud management solution to encompass its FortiGate UTMs, the SMB-focused all-in-one security solution that Gartner just named a Magic Quadrant leader in the space for the eighth year in a row.
The move means SMB customers using FortiGate UTM appliances can now deploy, manage and service their entire security and networking posture from a single pane of glass using Fortinet’s innovative Security Fabric architecture. Fortinet’s fabric uniquely enables all security and network tools to work together in concert to identify, mitigate and stop all manner of attacks in real time, no matter where they occur, on-premises or the cloud.
As a value-added distributor of Fortinet solutions, Fine Tec can help you deliver the advantages of UTM simplicity in the cloud. Learn more.