Fortinet - FortiOS 6.4 Beta and FortiOS 5.4 End-of-Support Announced

Fortinet has launched the beta of FortiOS 6.4. FortiOS 6.4 comes with over 350 new functions, which not only make the management of your company infrastructure even easier and clearer, but also more secure. A major focus here is on the ever-growing topic of SD-WAN, where Fortinet already offers new top performance in the hardware area with the SoC4 chip.

Artificial intelligence will also play an increasingly important role in the future in order to be able to detect threats as quickly as possible and to support and relieve IT administrators.

Digital innovation causes increased risk

Digital innovation is a disruptor that is transforming every single industry, enabling companies to accelerate their business, reduce costs, increase efficiency and provide a better customer experience. However, this disruption also brings with it increased security risks as businesses cope with the growing attack surface, advanced threats, increasing ecosystem complexity and growing compliance regulations. Only a true cybersecurity platform can enable digital innovation if it delivers results:

• Broad visibility of the entire digital attack surface to better manage risk,
• Integrated solutions that reduce the complexity of supporting multi-point products, and
• Automated workflows to increase the speed of operations and responses.

Fortinet's security framework enables digital innovation

To address today's risks and deliver the industry's most comprehensive cybersecurity platform that enables digital innovation, Fortinet continues to enhance the Fortinet Security Fabric with the latest version of its operating system, FortiOS 6.4. The Fortinet Security Fabric is the result of nearly 20 years of innovation, built organically from the ground up to be broad, integrated and automated. Every element of the Fortinet Security Fabric - from next-generation firewalls to access points and switches to the NAC solution - is designed to work together while integrating with one of the largest partner ecosystems in the industry.

What's new in FortiOS 6.4

With version 6.4, FortiOS adds new features designed to support enterprises' digital innovation goals across the four main pillars of Fortinet Security Fabric and FortiGuard Labs:

Security-driven networking: secure and accelerate the network and user experience.

• New intuitive SD-WAN orchestrator and granular application analytics in the Fabric Management Center to simplify and automate secure SD-WAN deployments.
• Real-time SD-WAN application optimisation in FortiGate to enable a consistent and resilient business application experience.
• Greater segmentation visibility by connecting multi-tenant VDOMs in the Security Fabric with FortiGate to protect internal enterprise risks.
• Enhanced Secure Web Gateway and IPS use cases to enable better protection and simplify management operations.
• Enhanced SD branch capabilities with FortiAP Controller and simplified operation of LTE connections through integrated management with FortiExtender and expanded FortiAP portfolio with WiFi 6 models.

Zero-trust network access: Identify and secure users and devices, on and off the network.

• Increased visibility of native devices in the Fortinet Security Fabric by integrating FortiNAC with the Fabric Topology Map and with FortiAnalyzer.
• Improved device profiling within FortiNAC, which includes better visibility of Linux devices and simplification of zero-trust network access deployments with features such as automatic IoT discovery and segmentation to reduce the complexity of securing IoT devices.
• Improved user identification and management with FortiManager Docker for FortiAnalyzer Cloud, which provides general workflow improvements and enhanced SAML in FortiAuthenticator, in addition to 2FA with FortiToken Cloud.
• Visibility and management inside and outside the network with Fabric Agent telemetry for devices on the network and secure VPN tunnels with FortiClient and secure external access with FortiGuard Cloud for devices outside the network.

Dynamic cloud security: Secure and controlled cloud infrastructure and applications.

• Broader cloud application protection with increased Office 365 security coverage through integration with FortiMail and FortiCASB; new FortiWeb deep learning capabilities to protect ever-changing applications running anywhere. FortiWeb can be deployed as a physical and virtual appliance, as a SaaS offering in the public or private cloud, or as a Docker container.
• Increased cloud network security efficiency with support for advanced hybrid cloud use cases, including SD-WAN for AWS outposts and GCP Anthos with FortiGate VM, and automatic remediation capabilities with FortiGate VM Cloud IDS.
• Advanced workload protection and multi-cloud visibility capabilities via FortiCWP asset inventory and streamlined security workflows.

AI-driven security operations: Automatically prevent, detect and respond to cyber threats.

• Adds new advanced endpoint threat detection and prevention capabilities with new next-generation AV (NGAV) capabilities, complementing FortiClient's endpoint hardening with machine-learning-based NGAV, real-time ransomware protection and the ability to mitigate threats in FortiEDR.
• Increased automation in FortiAnalyzer and FortiSIEM, and full orchestration of our new FortiSOAR to reduce SOC burden and enterprise exposure. Specifically, while FortiAnalyzer forms the foundation of Security Fabric analytics and FortiSIEM extends to multi-vendor environments, FortiSOAR adds the most robust automated collection of additional context and data to enrich incident response (IR), case management for more effective coordination and collaboration between customer security teams, and visual playbook orchestration and guided response.
• In addition, the Security Fabric adds dynamic threat hunting and staff augmentation to augment their resource-constrained security teams with Fortinet's 24/7 remote monitoring and IR service.

In addition, Fortinet has announced that FortiOS 5.4 will no longer be supported as of June 2020. 5.4 was released on 21 December 2015.

If you are still using devices with FortiOS 5.4, you should upgrade to a newer version as soon as possible. If you are not sure which upgrade path is the right one for your device, Fortinet offers a simple tool, the Upgrade-Tool.

Alternatively, you can also use Fortinet's Trade-Up programme to upgrade your old device to a new, more powerful model at a low cost.

If you have any questions about or are interested in a Fortinet product, please feel free to contact us by email, phone or our contact form.