A Guide to Adaptive Cloud Network Security

In today’s networks, organizations must figure out how to secure data that is regularly moved back and forth between private and public clouds. Complicating things further, a growing number of cloud compute infrastructures also rely on hyperscale to manage and process often massive amounts of data. Not only must workflows and applications securely travel across and between different clouds, data centers, and devices to accomplish their tasks, but security must also scale to secure north-south and east-west traffic.

Why Does Cloud Network Security Matter?

While the cloud enables businesses to compete more effectively in today’s global digital marketplace, it also increases business risks by expanding the potential attack surface. New business applications that rely on these cloud-based environments and resources are one example of this new risk if not secured properly. So, what does this mean for security? According to Gartner, by 2021, 90% of all web-enabled applications will have more surface area for attack due to exposed APIs, rather than just the user interface – up from just 40% in 2019. And the lack of professionals skilled in both cloud and security strategies and technologies reintroduces a risk to the network that seasoned security professionals have managed to overcome in traditional networks. 

Of course, the growing security skills gap compounds the challenge of implementing an effective cloud security strategy even further, affecting organizations across all regions. But this skills gap is most acutely felt in specialized areas such as security data analysis, securing and managing multi-cloud infrastructures, and within DevOps teams tasked with developing business-critical applications. Additionally, new initiatives such as migrating or extending data and other resources from public clouds back to private clouds, rolling out new cloud-based applications, and implementing SaaS solutions - including Salesforce, Office 365, or unified communications - make developing a consistent and easy-to-manage cloud security strategy increasingly important.

Enabling Security Across Dynamic Cloud and Network Environments

Fortinet has addressed these challenges with its unique Adaptive Cloud Security strategy that brings together network and application security solutions into a unified system – combined with visibility and control designed to span the entire multi-cloud infrastructure. It begins with Fortinet’s market-leading security platform, the Fortinet Security Fabric, which offers a full range of essential security tools built on a common operating system to deliver broad and integrated security, as well as unified management. 

Fortinet’s security platform is available in a variety of virtual form factors, including versions designed to run as cloud-native and containerized solutions, to ensure the broadest possible deployment. These different platform configurations leverage Fortinet’s cloud connector technologies to enable them to be tightly integrated together into a unified Security Fabric platform that can consistently protect the entire dynamic cloud network with uniform policy enforcement, centralized event correlation and management, and coordinated threat response. 

Tying this all together is Fortinet’s unique single-pane-of-glass management that can see every deployment to streamline operations, use unified workflows to ensure consistent policy enforcement, standardize configurations to guarantee uniform compliance, and maintain deep visibility to detect and respond to threats with a single, coordinated strategy.  

Fortinet’s Adaptive Cloud Security is Built on a Unified Security Fabric

By building and deploying an integrated Security Fabric designed to protect dynamic cloud environments – private, public, multi-cloud, and hybrid – organizations are able to unlock business agility without exposing themselves to the additional risks that come from expanding their potential attack surface. 

A unified Security Fabric not only protects data and connected resources from multiple threat vectors, but it also provides a consistent operational model across clouds and locations to simplify management and reduce planning, design, deployment, and optimization overhead. This value is extended further through the use of APIs and common standards that enable third-party solutions to integrate with the security platform and extended Security Fabric.

Fortinet’s Adaptive Cloud Security strategy provides critical key differentiators every organization must seriously consider. From a network security perspective, the Security Fabric provides the most scalable multi-cloud solution in the industry – scaling things like VPN, NGFW, IPS, and application control both up and out – to support and secure today’s dynamic cloud environments. And physical and virtual device management combined with dynamic network segmentation and microsegmentation establishes and ensures ongoing network control. Application security is similarly comprehensive with form factor flexibility (Docker for CI/CD, SaaS, etc.), machine learning for simplicity and accuracy, and extensive web application and API protections (WAAP).

These cloud-based deployments are then integrated into a single, unified security strategy using Fortinet’s cloud and cross-organization connectors to weave security into an integrated fabric that includes tiered visibility and management for managed services environments. Multi-cloud dashboards also provide a consistent view across your extended deployment, combined with granular visibility into each unique cloud. And integration with FortiGuard Labs ensures advanced threat protection for a rapidly evolving threat landscape, while Security Fabric intelligence can be seamlessly integrated into a SOC environment to ensure the broadest possible controls.

Adaptive Cloud Security for Any Cloud Strategy

Fortinet’s Adaptive Cloud Security strategy enables organizations to develop dynamic cloud-based business infrastructures without ever compromising the protection of users, data, and connected resources. The result is a complete solution for even the most dynamic cloud environments, with visibility and control delivered across the extended dynamic cloud environments – private, public, and hybrid.

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Learn how Fortinet’s adaptive cloud security solutions provide increased visibility and control across cloud infrastructures, enabling secure applications and connectivity from data center to cloud.

Read these customer case studies to see how Cuebiq and Steelcase implement Fortinet’s adaptive cloud security solutions for secure connectivity from data center to the cloud.