Fortinet the global leader in high-performance cybersecurity solutions, recently announced the extension of the Fortinet Security Fabric to defend enterprises against the exponentially increasing cyber threats posed by the Internet of Things (IoT). Fortinet’s Security Fabric delivers the visibility, integration, control and infrastructure scale required to successfully defend the complex attack surfaces created by the ongoing proliferation of IoT devices.

 “Malicious cyber actors have been increasingly targeting the billions of IoT devices online today, essentially turning the Internet of Things into an Internet of Threats. It’s critical that today’s enterprises implement security solutions that can identify, understand, and protect their infrastructures from the massive attack surfaces created by IoT. The Fortinet Security Fabric arms enterprises with proven security capabilities today, while providing a foundation for the visibility and automation required to maintain an effective IoT cybersecurity posture in the future,” says Phil Quade, chief information security officer at Fortinet.

A Security Fabric is Necessary to Defend Against IoT’s Massive Volume and Scale

Recent IoT-based attacks have revealed the sheer volume and ease by which billions of devices can be weaponised and used to disrupt the digital economies of entire countries and millions of users. These issues are compounded by the lack of basic security features and management capabilities in many IoT devices.

This is a major challenge for enterprises today whose data needs to remain secure as it traverses many types of devices and environments, from tablets to cloud applications. Current point products and platform security solutions lack the visibility and wider network integration necessary to see, let alone secure, the IoT attack surface.

The Fortinet Security Fabric Expands to Meet Today’s IoT Security Requirements

To successfully defend the massive scope of IoT and the cloud, organisations need to implement a Security Fabric that scales the entire infrastructure for comprehensive visibility, segmentation, and end-to-end protection. Enterprises need to consider three strategic network security capabilities to harden their infrastructure against IoT threats:

1. Learn – Complete network visibility is critical to securely authenticate and classify IoT devices, build risk profiles, and then assign IoT device groups based on identified trustworthiness. At the core of the Fortinet Security Fabric, FortiOS provides total IT awareness and visibility into every security element and enterprise networking component. This enables IT to identify and manage their IoT devices and traffic at critical points within the infrastructure.

2. Segment –Enterprises need to be able to segment IoT devices and communications into policy-driven groups and grant baseline privileges suitable for the specific IoT risk profile. Fortinet’s Internal Segmentation Firewall enables enterprises to internally segment their networks and devices,allowing IT to apply layered security policies based on the specific device type and network access requirements.

3. Protect – Fortinet’s Security Fabric provides the required capability to correlate IoT security incidents and threat intelligence to deliver a synchronised response to IoT threats. It also ensures that compromised IoT devices can be quarantined and remediated at multiple points within the network to contain threats and ensure that malicious traffic never reaches critical IT systems or enterprise data.

Fortinet’s Security Fabric is trusted by some of the largest enterprises and government organisations in the world to secure their critical IoT devices, spanning industrial applications and public utilities.

Security Fabric Automation is the Key to A Secure Future for IoT

Fortinet has laid the foundation for its continued innovation with its Security Fabric vision to deliver Intent-Based Network Security. With Intent-Based Network Security, enterprises can automate the execution of their IoT strategy and operations by translating business needs into synchronised network security actions without human intervention. Fortinet is actively driving the development of IoT security innovation and already holds dozens of issued and pending IoT security patents.