Fortinet, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security, today announced the latest version of its FortiOS operating system and other major enhancements to the company’s cybersecurity platform, the Fortinet Security Fabric.
Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer at Fortinet, said, “We founded Fortinet on the principle of fortifying our customers’ networks by converging networking into secure networking. To achieve this, we’ve spent the past two decades focused on organically developing our solutions around one operating system and investing in FortiASIC, our specialized compute processors. Today, FortiOS is the world’s most powerful, real-time network security operating system capable of simplifying management across content, applications, users, devices, data, and locations, and our proprietary FortiASICs deliver unprecedented performance, lower costs, and reduced energy consumption. Our dedication to over 20 years of organic innovation uniquely enables 30+ networking and security functions to work together, and we take great pride in enhancing the operating system that has already set the industry standard with the release of FortiOS 7.6.”
FortiOS 7.6 empowers customers to better mitigate risk, reduce complexity, and realize a superior user experience across their entire network with new features spanning several areas. This includes, hundreds of enhancements in FortiOS 7.6 deliver improvements across the Fortinet Security Fabric in areas such as Secure SD-WAN, secure access service edge (SASE), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), automation, provisioning, remote browser isolation, and digital experience monitoring (DEM), among other areas, all with flexible consumption (SaaS or PaaS) options.
Additionally, GenAI for threat analysis and product deployment has been included. Building on existing Generative AI (GenAI) capabilities for accelerated threat investigation and remediation, FortiOS 7.6 integrates FortiAI (formerly Fortinet Advisor) natively within Fortinet’s central data lake, FortiAnalyzer, and its unified management console, FortiManager. These integrations improve threat analysis and response and streamline network and security operations, respectively. Expanding FortiAI across the Fortinet Security Fabric facilitates faster decision-making, helps detect and remediate incidents quickly, and ensures organizations can easily adopt the technologies they require.
The new update also adds comprehensive data protection capabilities across the network with centralized data protection combined with enforcement points across the Fortinet Security Fabric will enable more enterprises to adopt and manage a complete data loss prevention (DLP) strategy. These FortiOS 7.6 enhanced features ensure sensitive information remains secure no matter where it resides within the hybrid network.
Additional updates to enhance the Fortinet Security Fabric includes endpoint detection and response features added to Fortinet’s unified agent, FortiClient, the Fortinet Security Fabric’s unified agent, will integrate with full endpoint detection and response (EDR) to add ransomware protection, behavior-based detections, and automated response, as well as deeper visibility, control, and ZTNA remote access capabilities. Fortinet delivers a unified agent that includes VPN, ZTNA, endpoint protection platform (EPP), EDR, DEM, network access control (NAC), and SASE to reduce agent sprawl and simplify management across complex environments.
The new update also provides more ways to combat the cyber skills shortage. On top of GenAI, FortiAnalyzer now includes options for out-of-the-box SIEM and SOAR services, delivering broader data ingestion and automated playbooks to streamline the adoption and expansion of security operations (SecOps). Ops augmentation is already available with our robust SOC-as-a-Service offering to assist SecOps, and we have now added a Managed FortiGate Service to support network operations teams. These services reflect Fortinet’s dedication to supporting our partners as they grow their portfolios to reach a broader audience and promote best-practice deployments everywhere. These services specifically help our partners better overcome the ongoing cyber skills shortage and streamline the digital transformation of their end customers.
