Fortinet introduces sovereign SASE and GenAI capabilities

Fortinet announced the addition of sovereign SASE and GenAI capabilities to its unified SASE solution. Fortinet Unified SASE provides complete integration between Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution and cloud-delivered security service edge (SSE) under a single console for seamless management, visibility, and security.

The new updates announced further the company’s vision of delivering a comprehensive and highly flexible unified SASE solution to customers.

Hybrid networks require a truly unified SASE solution

Most SASE solutions available today are fragmented, meaning they require many management consoles and agents while providing limited visibility and security enforcement. This complexity is expensive to maintain and creates gaps in security. Fortinet is unique in its ability to create a unified SASE solution that is powered by a single operating system, management console, endpoint agent, and data lake while truly integrating SD-WAN and SSE.

Fortinet Unified SASE provides all core SASE features, flexible connectivity (including access points and switches), and intelligent AI integrations with unified management, end-to-end digital experience monitoring (DEM), and consistent security policy enforcement with zero trust, both on-premises and in the cloud.

The importance of flexible connectivity: Sovereign SASE

According to Gartner, “Buyers are increasingly demanding more options for data and cloud sovereignty, including where traffic is routed, where it is inspected, and where logs are stored.” This is especially true for organizations operating in highly regulated verticals with sensitive data like finance, government, and healthcare.

New Fortinet Sovereign SASE provides a comprehensive SASE delivery option that enables organizations to maintain local control over inspection and logs. This ensures robust data privacy and compliance while offering enhanced security and flexibility to large enterprises and service providers.

With Fortinet Sovereign SASE, customers can determine how their data is routed and where security inspections occur, whether to a data center owned by Fortinet, a partner, or the customer, while ensuring their traffic is protected by Fortinet’s full security stack.

FortiAI for SD-WAN brings the power of GenAI to unified SASE

GenAI has emerged as a critical tool to support IT and cybersecurity staff and enable them to make better decisions faster. FortiAI, Fortinet’s GenAI assistant, is now available for Fortinet Secure SD-WAN to manage and orchestrate the entire SD-WAN infrastructure.

This integration accelerates and enhances Day 0 through Day 2 operations, including visual and configuration assistance, consultation, and troubleshooting. Customers can now deploy and manage their SD-WAN solutions quicker and more efficiently than ever before.

Continuous innovation delivers advanced features to Fortinet Unified SASE

Fortinet is committed to continuous SASE innovation and releases monthly updates so organizations can address their changing needs and stay one step ahead of attackers. Recent Fortinet Unified SASE updates include:

• Remote browser isolation (RBI) can now be configured natively within the FortiSASE cloud-based management console so organizations can isolate user web browsing traffic to protect their sensitive data from web-borne attacks.
• Fortinet Secure SD-WAN now promotes better network performance for on-demand full mesh networks and self-healing features that rectify issues in real time when building autonomous SD-WAN networks.
• Native SCIM support within Fortinet Unified SASE streamlines management and operations by making users and groups created on the identity provider directly available in the SASE portal. This reduces the need for coordination between separate IT teams, simplifying administrative tasks and enhancing efficiency.
• Universal ZTNA updates include access support to any application from any location and an application catalog that automates configurations for all ZTNA application integrations, eliminating the need to individually configure destinations.

“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. 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,” said John Maddison, CMO at Fortinet.