Growing Fortinet Open Fabric Ecosystem helps customers achieve integrated security

Fortinet’s rapidly growing open fabric ecosystem helps customers achieve integrated security

These integrations are made possible through Fortinet’s Fabric-Ready Partner Program, made up of strategic partnerships with industry-leading organisations to offer pre-validated solutions that provide advanced security and enhanced visibility across the entire digital infrastructure.

The evolving threat landscape coupled with a highly distributed workforce is rapidly expanding the digital attack surface. Many organisations using multiple vendors grapple with IT solutions working in isolation, leading to critical gaps that increase security risks. In fact, nearly two-thirds of enterprises in Enterprise Management Associate's Network Management Megatrends 2020 report indicated they use between four and 10 network management tools.

Fortinet helps organisations consolidate their solutions through the Security Fabric – an open architecture and integrated platform for complete visibility and comprehensive security across every network segment and device, whether it is hardware, virtual, or cloud-based. Through Fortinet’s Fabric Ecosystem, the Security Fabric has more than 400 integrations, unifying an array of solutions that communicate and work together to detect, monitor, block, and remediate attacks across the entire attack surface.

Fortinet’s Fabric-Ready Partner Programme was launched in 2016, and provides programme infrastructure, resources, and tools for alliance partners to integrate with the Security Fabric, develop joint solutions and become part of the ecosystem. Fabric-Ready technology alliance partnerships now span a wide array of technology areas, including cloud, OT, IoT, SD-WAN, networking, and more.

The Fabric Ecosystem extends the Fortinet Security Fabric, and customers benefit from the following types of integrated ecosystem solutions: Fabric Connectors (Fortinet-developed deep integrations into technology partner platforms that automate operations, policies, and processes); Fabric APIs (Partner-developed Fabric API integrations for a broad range of ecosystem solutions to secure the entire digital attack surface); Fabric DevOps (Community-driven set of security automation and orchestration tools and scripts developed by Fortinet, partners, and customers) as well as Extended Fabric Ecosystem (Threat intelligence sharing partnerships and other vendor technology integrations).

Customers can select from and leverage a broad array of integrated solutions to secure their infrastructure that fits best with whatever phase they are in on their digital journey. The Open Fabric Ecosystem solutions extend the benefits of the Security Fabric and are a testament to the openness of the Security Fabric and inclusive philosophy of the Fabric-Ready Partner Program.

James Yang, vice president, Cloud IoT Group at Advantech said that, “The Fabric-Ready partnership enables Advantech to integrate our edge computing servers and universal edge appliances with FortiGate-VM firewalls. Through this integration, we’re able to address customer needs for security and Secure SD-WAN in a variety of IoT edge, data centre, and virtualisation environments.”

Accordingto Jonas Björklund, CTO, Aptilo Networks, Aptilo has realised the full potential of being a member of Fortinet’s Open Fabric Ecosystem including access to open APIs, joint marketing engagements, and strong collaboration from global field teams as a valued ecosystem partner. The Aptilo IoT CCS, which includes the integration into Fortinet’s FortiGate NGFW, is groundbreaking because it adds connectivity control and a security layer for IoT services on top of the existing mobile core. A leader in cybersecurity, Fortinet Security Fabric is the perfect fit for Aptilo IoT CCS.

Meanwhile, Chris Bergey, senior vice president and general manager of Infrastructure Line of Business Arm said that, "As part of the Open Fabric Ecosystem, Arm is working with Fortinet to offer joint solutions that address customer security and networking needs in cloud, virtualisation, and data centre environments. Through the Fabric-Ready Technology Alliance Program and our collaboration with Fortinet, we can ensure our customers are enabled with a broad range of secure, high-performance solutions based on Arm Neoverse technology.”