Fortinet - Central management of the Fortinet Security Fabric with FortiManager Managed Service from EnBITCon

The rapid proliferation of digital innovations has made networks and network security much more complex - and vulnerable. While malicious cyberattacks remain a serious problem, 48% of all security breaches last year came from benign sources that could have been prevented. Furthermore, 75% of all network outages and performance issues are the result of misconfiguration errors. In this regard, a network security strategy that prioritises network automation can help reduce one of the main causes of cyber risk and downtime - human error and misconfiguration.

As a key component of the Security Fabric, the Fortinet Fabric Management Centre (comprising FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer) simplifies operations by addressing this key challenge faced by network infrastructure teams in small, medium or large enterprises.

Complexity of network operations

The challenges of increasingly complex and naturally fragmented infrastructures continue to enable an increase in cyber events and network outages. Too many point products deployed by most organisations almost always operate in isolated silos with their own management consoles and automation frameworks that are narrow and only relevant to that one product. As a result, network operations teams rarely have clear and consistent visibility into the controls and configurations that are in place across the infrastructure. More importantly, they lack comprehensive insight into the network to detect anomalies.

An integrated network security architecture with network automation capabilities can easily eliminate the complexity challenge for network operators. The Fortinet Fabric Management Center includes FortiManager combined with FortiAnalyzer to address three key use cases for effective network operations:

• Centralised Management
• Network automation and orchestration
• Security Fabric Analysis

Centralised Management

When it comes to network security, disparate products typically cannot share threat intelligence or coordinate responses across organisational infrastructure. This critical cybersecurity deficiency is often compounded by a lack of skilled security personnel to manage a wide range of disconnected individual products. But even large organisations with dedicated IT security staff still struggle to monitor the network to track which devices are connected, who has access to the network and which resources are required by which applications and workflows.

A centralised management solution with a single-pane-of-glass view like Fabric Management Center provides streamlined visibility that reduces complexity. It enables network operations teams to monitor data movement and identify anomalous activity, simplifies solution optimisation and centralises management of next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and other security tools from a single location. It also streamlines operations for administrators with limited or understaffed resources and staff who require fewer man-hours, while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).

Comprehensive device management:

• Supports centralised management with a single console across the NGFW, software-defined wired-area network (SD-WAN), software-defined branch (SD-Branch) and other use cases.
• Scales to support management of over 100,000 Fortinet devices
• Supports geographically distributed high availability with up to five units
• Enables the creation of management domains for better network segregation
• Provides advanced reports and dashboards for operations and security
• Provides report scheduling tools

Enterprise configuration and change management:

Visibility:

Network Automation and Orchestration

Automation and orchestration are increasingly being implemented, especially in organisations with complex infrastructure. These organisations are looking for ways to consolidate configuration and change management for security across complex, hybrid networks - and especially in use cases such as NGFW, SD-WAN and many others.

Operations teams need to be actively on the lookout for anomalies as companies increasingly rely on remote working. They also need to detect anomalies in virtual private network (VPN) access in real time. This cannot be achieved coherently if existing tools are not integrated and automated. The Fabric Management Centre enables automation and orchestration across complex infrastructures through connectors, automation hooks and real-time alerts on network anomalies.

Deployment and Maintenance:

• Provides an application programming interface (API) that allows anyone to manage Fortinet deployments and integrate with external deployment, monitoring, inventory and change management systems.
• Includes command line interface (CLI) support via sample scripts.
• Fortinet Fabric Connectors provide integration to manage policies in a single console across multiple software-defined networking (SDN), cloud and partner technology platforms.
• Includes a Fortinet distribution service that acts as a gateway for upgrades and threat intelligence for all deployed Fortinet devices.
• Enables fast and automated responses with FortiOS Automation Stitches - a simple way to define actions on triggers
• Provides interoperability with existing management and analytics tools

Network integrations:

Workflow and Orchestration:

Security Fabric Analytics

Real-time network visibility is not easy - especially as organisations add an increasing number of point products to already complex infrastructures. When network teams consolidate point products and leverage FortiOS for intrusion prevention (IPS), VPN, NGFW, SD-WAN, SD-Branch and other capabilities, they can easily share telemetry data between all deployments and enable real-time visibility of anomalies.

With the Fabric Management Center's FortiAnalyzer solution, organisations can apply FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence to identify issues in real time. FortiAnalyzer helps correlate threat data within the security fabric using the integrated analytics engine. It applies risk scoring to prioritise anomalies and share results across the infrastructure. These core analytics functions are managed through FortiManager's unified console view.

In addition, the analytics engine enables real-time visualisation of the security fabric. Using these visualisations, operations teams can identify and investigate all network risks in real time. FortiAnalyzer also comes with built-in dashboards and reports that can be easily customised. These features include over 700 data sets for easy onboarding queries optimised for real-time responses.

We offer this functionality as a managed service. You then don't have to worry about operations. The experts at EnBITCon make sure of that. Not only do we ensure that your Fortinet devices can be managed centrally at all times, we are also the direct contact for questions and problems. Short communication chains mean that concerns can be dealt with quickly and efficiently. This gives you more time to concentrate on your daily business.

If you are interested in our service, we are also happy to advise you or conduct a free 14-day trial. You can easily reach us via phone, email or our contact form.