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By Cornelius Mare, Director, Security Solutions, Fortinet Australia
Digital transformation is changing the enterprise at an ever-increasing rate. Organisations can now move faster to take advantage of digital opportunities. They can embrace new technologies like software-defined networks, multiple clouds, virtual infrastructure and automated intelligence. They can expand their markets from local to domestic to global. And they can build the value of their organisation by the judicious application of innovative technology.
Expanded threat landscape
But with all of this flexibility comes additional risk. And not just the risk of adding new products and services to your portfolio. That’s a given.
The risks with digital transformation revolve around cyber security. The more you embrace innovative technology, the more you open your network to intrusion, data theft or corruption, ransomware and hacks of all kinds. As you expand network operations, you expand the threat landscape.
New services – new risks
Each time you add a new network service you open a potential gateway for adversaries. Take SD-WAN, for instance. Using SD-WAN to connect branch offices provides advanced networking capabilities for staff. SD-WAN makes it easy to extend network functionality to the branch office. But can you extend your security policy at the same time? Without complementary security, SD-WAN can leave a gaping hole in your security posture.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. IoT (internet of things) and 5G will give enterprises more opportunity to capture valuable data from sensors, appliances, smart cars, industrial controls, you name it. Again, each one of these innovations, without deeply-embedded security, represents a security risk that can have a negative impact on your customers and business.
Consistent security policy to reduce risk
So what you need is a security ecosystem that does the basics - firewall, sandbox, real-time threat intelligence and updates, dashboard management, reporting, etc. – yet is agile enough so that you can extend, deploy and enforce your security posture to the farthest reaches of your network quickly and easily.
Adding security services to your network operations
Most legacy and point security solutions cannot keep up with the pace of digital transformation. Indeed, it is the rare enterprise that has a fully-integrated security ecosystem that protects every node, user, application and data set in a consistent manner. And as enterprises deploy new technologies – 5G perhaps – the gap between the security you need and the security you have can only grow larger.
Conclusion
If you have multiple components independently trying to defend your network, you’re only as strong as your weakest component. But if they’re collaborating in defending your network, their sum is greater than the individual parts.
Fortinet’s Security Fabric – which can be applied across the network and into the cloud – enables enterprises to standardise their network security and policies for collaborative protection. That, plus Fortinet’s focus on APIs and connectors that can add Fortinet security into the DevOps mix, ensures that you can add security as you roll-out new services.
Further, Fortinet’s commitment to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence means that you can count on Fortinet to ensure that their Security Fabric can be deployed in an effective manner no matter which way your digital transformation plays out.
About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organisations around the world. Fortinet empowers its customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network - today and into the future. Only the Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud or mobile environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide and more than 375,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. Learn more at http://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.
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Credit: Fortinet About the author
Cornelius Mare is Director, Security Solutions at Fortinet Australia. As such, it is his business to know what’s happening in the cybersecurity world and help enterprises secure their transitional networks without sacrificing speed, functionality or control.