Fortinet Expands OT Security Platform

Fortinet announced updates to its OT security platform, which already stands as the industry’s most comprehensive. Today’s news provides customers with enhanced secure networking and security operations (SecOps) capabilities and expands Fortinet’s strategic partnerships with leading OT vendors, reflecting Fortinet’s commitment to delivering security for the growing cyber-physical systems (CPS) market and dedication to protecting critical infrastructure in verticals spanning energy, defence, water supply systems, manufacturing, food, transportation, and more. In fact, Fortinet was recently recognised as a Representative Vendor in the 2023 Gartner Market Guide for CPS Protection Platforms.

John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer at Fortinet said, “As more operational infrastructure becomes connected, the attack surface increases, leading to greater cyber risk. Traditional information technology (IT) security tools are ineffective and worse, cannot even be deployed in an operational technology (OT) environment. Fortinet has been building an industry-leading OT security platform for 20+ years and today we are proud to announce many enhancements across the platform.”

According to the Fortinet 2024 State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report, cyberattacks that compromise OT systems are on the rise, with nearly three-fourths (73%) of organisations experiencing an intrusion that impacted either OT systems only or both IT and OT systems (up from 49% in 2023). As a result, it’s more critical than ever for organisations to deploy cybersecurity solutions specifically engineered for OT environments, including critical infrastructure.

Building upon its legacy of more than two decades as a global cybersecurity leader, Fortinet’s OT security platform was designed to mitigate industrial risk and accelerate and optimise customers’ OT security journeys. The latest updates to the platform include:

New Advanced Capabilities in OT Secure Networking

• Enhanced asset identification and OT network topology in the FortiOS OT View with configurable asset location to improve asset identity, location, and communication pathways.
• Expanded virtual patching capabilities and new capabilities in FortiOS: The introduction of virtual patching signatures in the FortiGuard OT Security Service provides wide-ranging vulnerability protection and unpatched OT asset shielding.

• Two new series of rugged switches: the FortiSwitch Rugged 216F-POE (power over Ethernet) is designed to support bandwidth-intensive industrial environments and redundant architectures, and the FortiSwitch Rugged 424F-POE has features designed to power Industrial-Internet-of-Things (IIoT) devices.

• FortiSRA enables secure remote access to support remote third-party contractors, auditors, and employees, protecting critical OT systems against threats from remote access and untrusted networks.

• FortiExtender Vehicle update enables fleet management in a ruggedised form factor to withstand harsh environmental conditions and offers secure LAN extension from remote FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls to create a truly unified platform for vehicles and first responders.

Expanding AI-Driven OT Security Operations Capabilities to Defend Against Growing OT Threats

• Expanded OT capabilities in FortiSOAR, including the introduction of OT View – an IT/OT overview dashboard with OT asset management – and new compliance playbooks to increase OT network and asset visibility and remediation for OT.

• Increased analytics and reporting capabilities in FortiAnalyzer by creating NERC CIP, IEC 62443-3-3, and IT/OT Risk reports. An upcoming IoT/IIoT/OT dashboard includes analytics support for Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) to further assist with regulatory compliance and security posture evaluations.
• FortiNDR for OT provides network behavior analysis to identify known and unknown threats across the IT/OT infrastructure and detect OT network anomalies.

• FortiDeceptor-as-a-Service offers expanded deception for OT and IoT with additional devices and protocols and simplified deployments to streamline user experiences.

Enhancing Fortinet’s OT Partnerships

Fortinet’s global partner ecosystem brings together organisations with specialised OT expertise to help customers maximise cyber resiliency and improve operational efficiency.

Recent collaborations with Fortinet Alliance partners Armis and Claroty, as part of the Fortinet Open Ecosystem, have produced new and enhanced integrations with FortiManager, FortiSIEM, FortiSOAR, and FortiNAC to maximise actionable OT asset information, simplify OT network operations for customers, and improve customers’ security postures.

Additionally, Fortinet introduced a new Engage Preferred Services Partner (EPSP) OT Practice designation to empower OT channel partners with the tools they need to design and deploy OT network infrastructure.