Security threats loom larger every day as digital attack surfaces become larger and more dynamic and the bad guys morph fast, creating potential chaos with targeted and zero-day attacks.

“A point product these days just can’t cope. … You need solutions against specific threat vectors that are applied in a dynamic way using the fabric,” said John Maddison (pictured), senior vice president of products and solutions at Fortinet Inc.

Maddison spoke with Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the Fortinet Accelerate event in Las Vegas, Nevada, to discuss developments in network security and the recently released FortiOS 6.0.

Build out a secure network from day one

The Fortinet Security Fabric is a complete security solution, reducing the number of security vendors required from 40-plus to an average of 10–12. This is a key differentiator to other security solutions, according to Maddison.

“It’s a mesh network; all these products talk to each other,” he said. “You can only really do that if you build those products organically, step-by-step, alongside the network operating system. It’s no good acquiring lots of bits and pieces and trying to bolt it together. It’s not going to work.”

Benefitting from 10 years of organic build-out, the release of FortiOS 6.0 adds more than 200 new features and functionalities to the Security Fabric, including:

• Tighter integration between the products that comprise the Fabric
• SD-WAN security
• New cloud access security broker providing standalone and integrated application programming interface access to software as a service clouds

Ninety percent of the global S&P 100 companies are protected by Fortinet, giving Maddison an insight into the changes taking place at a corporate level. “The networking team and the security team have realized they can’t just keep fixing things day to day; they need a more holistic long-term architecture,” he said. “… It is absolutely essential that they build out a secure network from day one, not as an afterthought.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. (* Disclosure: Fortinet Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Fortinet nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE