Fortinet Announces Major Updates to FortiOS Operating System

Fortinet  recently announced version 7.0 of FortiOS, the company’s flagship operating system.

With over 300 new features, FortiOS 7.0 enhances the Fortinet Security Fabric and Fortinet’s ability to deliver consistent security for all networks, endpoints, and clouds.

Major updates in FortiOS 7.0 tackle some of today’s biggest security challenges related to work from home, securing the SASE edge, and more, and expand across the following key areas:

Zero Trust Access

FortiOS 7.0 enables every FortiGate customer to employ zero trust network access (ZTNA) capabilities out of the box. ZTNA enabled by FortiOS 7.0 improves user experience by supporting the evolution of better remote access to replace traditional VPN. It also reduces the attack surface by verifying the user and device for every application session, while hiding business-critical applications from the internet. ZTNA from Fortinet further simplifies management by using the same access policy no matter where users are, whether on- or off-network.

Security-Driven Networking

Fortinet gives enterprises the flexibility needed to enable their workforce to work from anywhere with consistent, enterprise-grade security delivered on-premises – and now, via cloud-based SASE consumption (security-as-a-service). Off-network remote users benefit from the same level of security no matter where they are located. Customers that prefer a light-weight simplified branch (thin edge) are also supported via SASE.

Fortinet’s leading Secure SD-WAN solution now also includes self-healing capabilities through adaptive WAN remediations to make the application experience more resilient. Fortinet has also expanded its passive application monitoring for SaaS and multi-cloud applications for better user-experience to support users working from anywhere.

Fortinet is further extending network connectivity and security beyond the WAN edge with innovations in 5G and LTE that improve wireless network performance and increase resiliency. With a diverse Wireless WAN and LTE offering, organizations can achieve secure, scalable, and highly available network connectivity anywhere.

Adaptive Cloud Security

With the introduction of FortiOS 7.0, Fortinet’s adaptive cloud security offerings now provide central management for hybrid clouds with auto-scaling for practical usage of resources, dynamic load-balancing, and application user experience visibility – all designed to proactively improve overall performance and security within and across clouds.

NOC/SOC

FortiOS 7.0 introduces new and expanded capabilities that offer network security teams of all sizes and sophistication more options to improve operational efficiency, including FortiManager/FortiAnalyzer integrations with the latest release of FortiSOAR as a container to fully orchestrate an organization’s security processes.

New updates also simplify SaaS management and strengthen Fortinet’s ability to reduce the complexity of operations into a single management experience via FortiCloud. For organizations who wish to leverage our industry-leading security expertise to augment their operational teams, Fortinet now offers SOC-as-a-Service and NOC Best Practice Service.

FortiGuard Labs Threat Intelligence

The FortiGuard security service portfolio includes a rich set of advanced security capabilities for content, users, devices, web access, and applications protection.

With FortiOS 7.0, Fortinet enhances its already rich web protection offering with industry-first video filtering to provide even more granular protection for the video-intense content consumption patterns driven by the increase in work-from-home.

FortiOS 7.0 will be available at the end of 1Q21.