Fortinet's New Virtual Appliances Extend Cloud Security
FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiMail virtual appliances enhance security of virtual, private, public, and hybrid cloud environments
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Fortinet, a network security provider, announced four new virtual appliances that extend security across virtualized and cloud environments.
The FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiMail virtual appliances combine with physical appliances to provide a choice of physical and virtual form factors, working together to mitigate security blind spots and increase security controls within virtualized infrastructure environments. The combined solution provides a deeper integration into the virtual environments many customers have adopted.
The risks associated with blind spots in the virtual environment, along with the lack of security controls, become increasingly problematic as the size of virtual environments grow. With a choice of physical and virtual appliances, Fortinet provides a single-pane-of-glass management platform that allows for greater flexibility to combine physical and virtual appliances together to achieve the right mix of performance, visibility, and control.
Fortinet’s virtual security appliances were built to run on top of VMware hypervisors. The new FortiGate virtual appliances help secure network infrastructures with integrated, multi-threat security. Like a traditional FortiGate appliance, a FortiGate virtual appliance protects infrastructure from a broad array of threats by enabling customers to consolidate their standalone security technologies, reducing the cost and complexity of their security infrastructure.
Customers can combine firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, malware prevention, application security, and complete content protection, data loss prevention, Web filtering, and anti-spam -- and have the added advantage of being able to inspect inter-zone traffic. In addition, FortiGate virtual appliances can be used in conjunction with traditional FortiGate appliances to help ensure both the perimeter and the virtual layers within a virtual environment are protected, visible, and easy to manage.
FortiManager virtual appliances help enterprises effectively manage any size Fortinet security infrastructure, from a few devices to thousands of appliances and endpoint security agents. The appliances provide centralized policy-based provisioning, configuration, and update management for FortiGate, FortiWiFi, and FortiMail appliances, as well as FortiClient endpoint agents.
FortiAnalyzer virtual appliances securely aggregate log data from Fortinet devices and other syslog-compatible devices. Using a suite of customizable reports, users can filter and review records, including traffic, event, virus, attack, Web content, and e-mail data, mining the data to determine security stance and help assure regulatory compliance. FortiAnalyzer also provides advanced security management functions such as quarantined file archiving, event correlation, vulnerability assessments, traffic analysis, and archiving of e-mail, Web access, instant messaging. and file transfer content.
FortiMail virtual messaging security appliances block inbound spam and malware before it can clog a network and affect users. They also help prevent outbound spam or malware (including 3G mobile traffic) from causing other anti-spam gateways to blacklist users.
The virtual appliances work similarly to their hardware counterparts, in that Fortinet continues to provide virtual domain (VDOM) and administrative domain (ADOM) technologies for securing and managing virtual and multi-tenant environments. The virtualization technologies work in conjunction with industry-standard birtual LANs (VLANs) to enable a single virtual or physical Fortinet device to support hundreds of domains within the environment, providing essential visibility and security controls between zones while maintaining the benefits of virtualization.
The FortiGate and FortiManager virtual appliances are available now. FortiAnalyzer and FortiMail virtual appliances will be available in Q4 2010. More information is available at www.fortinet.com.