Cybersecurity firm Fortinet Inc. today announced updates to its secure access service edge solution, introducing new sovereign SASE options and the integration of generative artificial intelligence capabilities to provide improved flexibility in managing hybrid networks.

Fortinet Unified SASE provides complete integration between Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution and cloud-delivered security service edge under a single console for seamless management, visibility and security. The new updates announced today are aimed at furthering the company’s vision of delivering a comprehensive and highly flexible unified SASE solution to customers.

The updates seek to address the issue wherein existing SASE solutions are claimed to be fragmented and often require multiple management consoles and agents while providing limited visibility and security enforcement. Fortinet argues that this complexity is expensive to maintain and creates gaps in security.

Its unified SASE solution is powered by a single operating system, management console, endpoint agent and data lake while integrating SD-WAN and SSE. The new updates, the company says, enhance its service with the introduction of sovereign SASE, which gives organizations more control over their data and security operations.

Sovereign SASE is beneficial for industries such as finance, healthcare and government, where data privacy, regulatory compliance and local data sovereignty are critical concerns. With the new offering, organizations can determine where their data is routed, inspected and stored, which can include within Fortinet’s data centers, a partner’s facility or their own infrastructure, ensuring robust security while maintaining compliance with local regulations.

In addition to sovereign SASE, Fortinet has also integrated generative AI capabilities through FortiAI, an AI assistant designed to optimize the management and orchestration of Secure SD-WAN infrastructure. FortiAI enhances operations from the initial deployment (Day 0) to ongoing management (Day 2), providing visual and configuration assistance, consultation and troubleshooting.

The integration enables customers to deploy and manage their SD-WAN solutions more quickly and efficiently, reducing the operational burden on information technology teams and improving overall network performance.

“Many vendors today are packaging up fragmented SASE capabilities and calling it ‘unified SASE.’ Fortinet is the only vendor with a unified SASE solution united by one data lake, one operating system, and AI-driven security that also offers customers unparalleled deployment flexibility,” said Chief Marketing Officer John Maddison. “Not only are we offering a truly integrated solution, but we’re also adding more flexibility and simplicity with the introduction of sovereign SASE and new generative AI features.”

The updates today add to other recent updates to Fortinet’s platform, including enhancements announced earlier this month that included enhanced security networking and security operations capabilities as part of the company’s commitment to provide security for the growing cyber-physical systems market.

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