Fortinet’s Leadership in OT Security Expanded with New Additions to its Fabric-Ready Partner Ecosystem

Rajesh Maurya, Regional Vice President, India & SAARC at Fortinet“As OT networks embrace digital transformation, and physical and cyber domains continue to converge, sensitive production environments and critical infrastructures are increasingly being exposed to cyber risks. Fortinet is committed to protecting crucial and sensitive OT environments through the integrated power of the Fortinet Security Fabric, which includes advanced and specialized protections provided by our growing number of Fabric-Ready Partners.”

News Summary
Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced the expansion of its Technology Alliances ecosystem to include four leading operational technology specialists.

• The OT industry is being impacted by convergence and digital transformation. As physical and IT networks continue to integrate, including those in critical infrastructures and industrial automation companies, OT networks are leveraging well-integrated solutions based on strong segmentation and specialized analytics to ensure the safety and reliability of physical processes and things, addressing new security risks targeting multi-vector threat landscapes.

• Fortinet, an established leader in OT security and safety, is building upon its success with existing Fabric-Ready Partner Nozomi Networks and is announcing its partnership with three additional OT specialist firms – RAD, Indegy and SecurityMatters. These partnerships extend the range of integrated security solutions now available to OT customers through the Fortinet Security Fabric.

• Fortinet’s Security Fabric platform approach to cybersecurity leverages Fabric APIs, Fabric Connectors and DevOps scripts and tools to create an open ecosystem to accommodate leading technology solutions. This integrated approach seamlessly brings together a wide range of critical security solutions designed for the OT segment to enable comprehensive and centralized safety, reliability and security.

Operational Technology (OT) organizations are adopting digital transformation to unlock the advantages of the Internet and connected IIoT devices. But as cybercriminals begin to more aggressively target OT devices and systems, OT networks need to evolve to address increasing cyber risk. The challenge is that the nature of many OT networks requires specialized security technologies and solutions in order to provide protections without impacting the function of oftentimes sensitive equipment and systems. According to Gartner, “The converging of IT and OT systems, combined with increased use of IoT in industrial environments, is challenging many security practices in defining the best security architecture that aligns to transforming and modernizing environments.”¹ As OT networks emerge as a new target for cybercriminals, they need a single, cohesive Security Fabric platform that enables them to seamlessly address security risk across multi-vector threat landscapes without overburdening security staff resources or impacting their networked environments.

To better address this challenge, Fortinet, a longtime leader in the growing space of OT cybersecurity, welcomes four OT specialist firms into its Technology Alliance and Fabric-Ready Partner ecosystem to expand the range of solutions available for OT customers. Three new OT security specialists – RAD, Indegy and SecurityMatters – join with longstanding partner Nozomi Networks to provide advanced visibility into the OT-specific commands and protocols to better inform the Fortinet Security Fabric to secure the emerging cyber-physical domain of OT networks. These partners enhance the OT-specific capabilities within Fortinet’s portfolio by adding deep packet inspection and contextual analysis capabilities to Fortinet’s OT vulnerability scanning and policy enforcement.

Fortinet is one of the few major security vendors to address the cybersecurity, safety and reliability challenges being faced by the OT industry. The Fortinet Security Fabric provides a unique centralized and integrated platform approach to security through purpose-built solutions designed for OT environments, combined with strategic partnerships with some of the industry’s leading OT security specialists. Unlike most security platforms, the Fortinet Security Fabric is flexible enough to easily accommodate and integrate with a large number of partners to provide truly comprehensive security coverage for this important segment.