$48-billion cybersecurity titan brings fresh enhancements to security fabric solution

Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader, has announced the latest version of its FortiOS operating system and major enhancements to the company’s cybersecurity platform, the Fortinet Security Fabric.

The new version, FortiOS 7.6, offers hundreds of enhancements that improve risk mitigation, reduce complexity, and enhance user experience across the entire network. These improvements span various areas, including Secure SD-WAN, secure access service edge (SASE), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), automation, provisioning, remote browser isolation, and digital experience monitoring (DEM).

One of the significant enhancements in FortiOS 7.6 is the integration of FortiAI (formerly Fortinet Advisor) natively within Fortinet’s central data lake, FortiAnalyzer, and its unified management console, FortiManager.

This integration improves threat analysis and response and streamlines network and security operations, respectively. By expanding FortiAI across the Fortinet Security Fabric, faster decision-making, quicker incident detection and remediation, and easier adoption of required technologies become possible.

FortiOS 7.6 also offers comprehensive data protection capabilities across the network, with centralized data protection and enforcement points across the Fortinet Security Fabric. These enhanced features ensure sensitive information remains secure no matter where it resides within the hybrid network.

Endpoint detection and response features have also been added to Fortinet’s unified agent, FortiClient. This integration adds ransomware protection, behavior-based detections, and automated response, as well as deeper visibility, control, and ZTNA remote access capabilities. Fortinet delivers a unified agent that includes VPN, ZTNA, endpoint protection platform (EPP), EDR, DEM, network access control (NAC), and SASE to reduce agent sprawl and simplify management across complex environments.

To combat the cyber skills shortage, FortiOS 7.6 now includes options for out-of-the-box SIEM and SOAR services, delivering broader data ingestion and automated playbooks to streamline the adoption and expansion of security operations (SecOps). Fortinet’s robust SOC-as-a-Service offering assists SecOps, and a Managed FortiGate Service now supports network operations teams.

These services reflect Fortinet’s dedication to supporting its partners as they grow their portfolios to reach a broader audience and promote best-practice deployments everywhere. These services specifically help partners better overcome the ongoing cyber skills shortage and streamline the digital transformation of their end customers.

Fortinet’s dedication to integrating its portfolio across one operating system, coupled with its investments in custom ASICs, has yielded tangible benefits for customers of all sizes. FortiOS started as a firewall operating system and excels at that function, delivering orders of magnitude of performance and power efficiency advantages when paired with Fortinet’s internally developed ASICs.

With a single OS across all FortiGate models, Fortinet’s custom ASICs accelerate FortiOS functions to support 14 networking and security applications, enabling a hybrid mesh firewall approach to infrastructure security, protecting on-prem, remote, and cloud environments with consistent security policies and management.

The Fortinet Security Fabric Platform supports customers with a platform approach to cybersecurity, converging networking and security through one operating system (FortiOS), one unified agent (FortiClient), one management console (FortiManager), and one data lake (FortiAnalyzer) to integrate and protect the entire digital attack surface. It is focused on three major enterprise pillars: secure networking, unified SASE, and AI-driven security operations.

The Fortinet Security Fabric is the result of over two decades of relentless focus on the company’s platform vision and organic product development and innovation. It spans more than 50 enterprise-grade products and services, including network firewall, wired and wireless LAN, SD-WAN, SASE, SIEM, and EPP.

This extensive integrated product coverage, combined with open APIs and a deep technology alliance partner ecosystem of over 500 third-party vendors, ensures customers can start building a platform based on what they currently have deployed and leverage the Fortinet Security Fabric in the way that drives the most value for their unique needs.