Network security specialist Fortinet announced an update to the company’s FortiOS Network Security Operating System, along with new releases for integrated reporting, advanced threat protection (ATP) and strong authentication.
FortiOS 5 is the operating system foundation for the FortiGate platform and offers a range of security capabilities and configuration options, with the latest release boasting faster single socket layer (SSL) inspection, richer reporting with more out-of-the-box reports and drill down capability from FortiAnalyzer, and tighter integration with FortiAuthenticator and FortiSandbox for strong authentication and ATP.
“Security leaders must address threats from rising SSL traffic,” Jeremy D’hoinne and Adam Hils, research directors with IT research firm Gartner, wrote in a December security report. “Less than 20 percent of organizations with a firewall, an intrusion prevention system (IPS) or a unified threat management (UTM) appliance decrypt inbound or outbound SSL traffic.”
The study projected that by 2017, more than half of the network attacks targeting enterprises will use encrypted traffic to bypass controls, up from less than 5 percent today.
Fortinet also announced the FortiSandbox-1000D, sporting a dual-level sandbox along with proactive pre-filtering, dynamic threat intelligence and rich reporting capabilities.
The FortiSandbox-1000D (and previously released FortiSandbox-3000D) now run software version 1.2, which features enhanced instrumentation to better deal with increasing virtual machine (VM) evasion techniques, an updated assessment engine to increase detection rates and new call-back detection to identify outbound communications both in the sandbox and on the wire.
The enterprise-grade FortiAuthenticator-1000D, which provides multiple methods of authentication, including hardware, software, email and SMS tokens, has been improved to help organzations move to a stronger, user-based authentication model.
The company also released a FortiAnalyzer 5 update and announced the upcoming FortiAnalyzer-3500E software enhancements, which include a wider selection of prebuilt reports and greater drilldown capabilities for better visibility into network behavior and tighter integration with the company’s FortiGate platform.
In addition, the new FortiAnalyzer-3500E will feature 24 TB (upgradable to 48 TB) of storage to meet the requirements of high volume enterprises.
The FortiOS 5 and FortiAnalyzer 5 updates are currently available, while FortiAnalyzer-3500E is expected in the second quarter of this year.
The FortiAuthenticator-1000D is also available now, as is the FortiSandbox 1.2 software update for FortiSandbox-3000D customers, while the FortiSandbox-1000D is expected to ship in the second quarter of this year, the company said.
“Enterprises today are clamoring for improved network visibility that includes deeper packet inspection and granular control over network access, traffic, content and use, and they want it without introducing bottlenecks into the real-world traffic flow,” John Maddison, vice president of marketing for Fortinet, said in a statement. “Fortinet extends that capability with advanced threat protection and authentication, all from a single vendor and all orchestrated through a single management console.”