There is a school of thought among some analysts in the enterprise world that edge computing will eat the cloud. This notion was further reinforced during the keynote discussion by several executives at Fortinet Inc. on the opening day of the Fortinet Accelerate conference in Orlando, Florida.

Yet, other analysts have a slightly different view of what will be eaten and why. “I’d rather say if software is going to eat the world, it’s going to eat it at the edge,” said Peter Burris (@plburris), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the opening day of the Fortinet Accelerate event in Orlando. “The edge is going to reshape the cloud and the cloud is going to move to the edge. Security, discovery, visibility have to be absolutely clear at the edge. There can be no fog.”

Burris was joined by Lisa Martin (@LisaMartinTV), co-host of theCUBE, and they discussed protection challenges presented by edge computing and Fortinet’s work to position itself as a leader in the cybersecurity world (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Expanded attack surface

The edge/cloud dynamic presents an interesting challenge in the network security world as firms like Fortinet must increasingly protect an expanded digital attack surface that spans internet of things devices, network environments, and a multicloud ecosystem. Today the company released an expanded version of its FortiOS Security Fabric, designed to offer a wider range of protection.

This has also raised the potential for different trust zones to accommodate the need for security layers across multiple environments based on what computing actions are needed to protect the closest data source.

“The notion of the edge becoming defined in part by different zones of trust is very, very interesting,” Burris said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how Fortinet over the next few years targets some of its core software functionality so that it becomes more cloud-like in how it’s managed. That’s going to be a source of pressure, a major source of tension in entire the software-defined marketplace.”

Fortinet executives also spent time today discussing the company’s role in the “pillars” of cybersecurity, defined as education, ecosystem and technology.

“Last year they were talking about these three pillars of cybersecurity that are really at the heart of Fourth Industrial Revolution,” Martin said. “They sort of set themselves up as, I wouldn’t say predictors of what’s happening, but certainly at the leading edge.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Fortinet Accelerate event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Fortinet Accelerate 2019. Neither Fortinet Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Fortinet