Hey folks, Today I want to chat to you guys about the services and features that Fortinet firewall provides and how it can help your business and drastically improve on user productivity but also prevent malicious behavior internally or externally.
Please note that the information I provide is based on my experiences and the use of the Fortinet product therefore please use this material in conjunction with the plenty of Fortinet material out there including material from https://www.fortinet.com.
I am still going to review the Fortinet 60C which is in my lab but please note that this firewall is end of life and does not have any Fortiguard Services(I will explain later on what Fortiguard Services are) and this firewall is one that is more suited for a smaller business for about 50 users.
Also, If you are looking for the equivalent then please read up on the Fortinet 60E which is the replacement for this Fortinet 60C. For ease of reference please click Here
So lets get cracking on understanding the packages that make the Fortinet and how it makes Fortinet the next generation firewall.
First up lets discuss the FortiAnalyzer, quite simply this product is one that logs activity whether malicious or if you wanted to be really granular then you could track your internal users usage and web history.
FortiManager - This isn't something most businesses use as there arent many that run alot of firewalls. This product is more suited for I.T companies who take care of the security needs for businesses and manage hundreds of firewalls.
FortiAp - This is something that I used briefly and very soon did away with because I felt there was too much riding on the firewall which puts a lot of strain on processing power, for those of you who guessed that this is for wireless access points then you are correct.The Fortinet acts as the wifi controller.
FortiClient - This product is one that I swear by for accessing our business network remotely. It is safe and secure and controlled via domain Security Group.
The rest of the services which form Fortiguard Services is below and more details can be found on Fortinet website.
I will review some of the key features that I think are beneficial for you and your business.
Fortiguard Web Filtering - This feature helps with blocking websites based on categories as well as getting new site definitions and enabling this for a certain set of users. This feature also allows you to determine which category you would like to either allow or disallow FortiAnalyzer to log to database.
FortiGuard Intrusion Prevention - Helps scan http for either malicious activity and blocks the intrusion.
FortiGuard Antispam Service - Blocks internal or external spam if your Exchange is brought into the firewall (I personally dont use this as I have another cloud service that does this).
Hope this has been informative for you and I thank you for reading.
Regards,
Trev03
