Month: October 2020

Unlike previous mobile generations, 5G is touted as a game changer for both mobile network operators (MNOs) and enterprises in many verticals. 

For MNOs, 5G has the potential to deliver a whole new scope of enterprise-facing, value added services, generating new revenue streams and driving growth.

For medium to large enterprises in different industries and verticals, harnessing 5G technology and capabilities will further help to increase efficiency, automation, safety, sustainability and overall innovation.

This is the promise of 5G and it raises some important question: if 5G is to play such a central and critical role, what is the role of security in 5G’s adoption and penetration in the business market? Does 5G have an acceptable set of built in security capabilities in order to safeguard itself, and the business customers it serves from harm’s way? Or is an additional layer of security is required in order to capture the 5G business market?

At Fortinet, we strongly believe that although 5G delivers inherent security capabilities, these by themselves should not and cannot be considered as the only line of defense against 5G infrastructure and services misuse, cyber threats and risks. An additional layer of security visibility and control is required.

In order to get a larger view from MNOs and the overall 5G ecosystem partners, Fortinet commissioned TelecomTV, in association with ETSI and HardenStance, to perform a survey to better understand their view on the target business market for 5G and the role of 5G security in the industry’s ability to capture the 5G business market. The survey, concluded in May 2020, highlights the following:

• Use cases tailored to unique vertical industries are key to the success of 5G in the business market.
• Security plays a central role in 5G’s success with almost 90% of respondents stated that an operator’s security capabilities are either critical or very important. 
• Implementing 3GPP 5G security features is a key baseline requirement but additional security is required as enterprise 5G use cases will require more security capabilities. 
• Mobile operators should offer a comprehensive, full-stack, end-to-end security with 5G enterprise use cases.

The survey demonstrates the central role security has to play in an MNO’s ability to successfully deliver 5G to the business market. To be able to deliver, MNOs and the overall 5G ecosystem must ensure that security capabilities that complement 3GPP’s 5G security recommendations are put in place to provide threat visibility, control and mitigation against a growing set of sophisticated cybersecurity risks, such as:

• Control and user plane security
• IoT/OT misuse, signaling storm and bots
• API exposure attacks in the SBA core and the multi-access edge compute (MEC) sites
• Application-level security for the overall ecosystem and industry use cases’ applications
• Security and NAT services for packet data networks connectivity    
• Security for non-public mobile networks, also known as 5G private mobile networks

Fortinet is ideally positioned to provide an end to end security for the 5G ecosystem and use cases in the business market segment. Fortinet’s leading position in providing security for both small to very large enterprises and MNOs provides us with a unique understanding as to the security needs in industry use cases and the ability to deliver the solutions and know how to fulfill them.

FortiGate and FortiWeb provide a common security platform for both MNOs and businesses considering/using 5G in multiple industries and use cases. It enables the MNO to secure its 5G infrastructure and ensure service availability and continuity to its enterprise customers. It also provides the opportunity to deliver revenue-generating managed security services on top of 5G for enterprise use case consumption. And the same platforms can be implemented or co-managed by the enterprise customers when required – in securing 5G private mobile networks for example.

Read more about the Fortinet-commissioned study by TelecomTV about Leveraging Security to Capture the 5G Business Market.

Digital innovation and increasing cloud application bandwidth demands have led network infrastructure and operations leaders to turn to SD-WAN as a de-facto solution for their WAN transformation and roadmap efforts. In a crowded SD-WAN market of over 80 vendors, it’s more critical than ever for organizations to be able to identify the right solution that best fits their specific use cases. The Gartner September 2020 Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure report offers essential research that we believe helps organizations to differentiate between vendors based on their deployment, operational flexibility, and application performance requirements. 

The Gartner Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities Reports

Gartner’s well-known annual Magic Quadrant reports recognizes vendors in a variety of key technical markets based on key factors, like their ability to execute and the completeness of their vision. However, there are additional Gartner reports that may provide further insight for those organizations looking to select and deploy a solution that best suits their specific use case. Gartner’s “Critical Capabilities” reports use proprietary methodologies to score organizations in critical subcategories within each Magic Quadrant area based on more granular criteria. These reports extend the value of the more general Magic Quadrant recognitions by providing deeper insight into providers’ product and service offerings for key market segments.

Fortinet Scores Highest in “Security-Sensitive WAN” (4.26/5) and” Small Footprint Retail WAN” (4.14/5) Use Cases and Scored Third Highest in the “Large Global WAN” (4.09/5) Use Case in Gartner 2020 Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure Report

This September, Fortinet was identified as a Leader in the Gartner 2020 Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure. But just as importantly, Fortinet also received the highest scores in two use cases in the Gartner September 2020 “Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure” report. In that analysis, Fortinet’s SD-WAN solution scored highest in the “Security-Sensitive WAN” (4.26/5) and “Small Footprint Retail WAN” (4.14/5) use cases and scored the third highest for the “Large Global WAN” (4.09/5) use case.

These three use cases are characterized by key requirements, as outlined below:

Security-Sensitive WAN: A security-sensitive WAN typical in some mid- to large-scale organizations from 25 sites and higher that are focused on securing branch offices as the main priority where network and security procurements are increasingly converging.

Small Footprint Retail WAN: This category is a representative of small site/mass deployment needs that are common in such retail markets as convenience stores, quick service restaurants, gas stations, specialty retail, bank ATMs and independent insurance agents.

Large Global WAN: This category looks at the needs of larger multinational organizations with a global WAN requirement for more than 200 sites, and that spans at least two continents.

We believe that, with our Security-Driven Networking approach and custom-built ASICs, Fortinet delivers a scalable, flexible Secure SD-WAN solution that customers can deploy across the home, branch, campus and multi-cloud.

According to Gartner, “SD-WAN product differentiation is primarily based on feature breadth and/or depth, specifically on security, application performance optimization, and cloud features.” In addition, they cite that “simplified and unified security is a main driver for customers as they determine the best architectural approach for the integration of networking and security.” As an industry leader in both security and SD-WAN, we believe Fortinet offers the most comprehensive SD-WAN solution available, enabling customers to achieve best user experience at reduced cost and complexity, while delivering on our strong vision of providing a flexible and secure solution anywhere. 

Recent Recognitions for Fortinet Secure SD-WAN 

We are absolutely thrilled to be positioned as a Leader in the 2020 Gartner WAN Edge Magic Quadrant, to be named as a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers Choice for WAN Edge Infrastructure, and to be recognized in the 2020 Gartner Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure report!

Read the full 2020 Gartner Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure report.

Learn more about Fortinet Secure SD-WAN.

Gartner Critical Capabilities for WAN Edge Infrastructure, Jonathan Forest, Andrew Lerner, Naresh Singh, 30, September 2020.

Gartner, Gartner Peer Insights ‘Voice of the Customer’: WAN Edge Infrastructure, PEERS, Published 13 April 2020

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge InfrastructurePublished 23, September 2020, Jonathan Forest, Andrew Lerner, Naresh Singh

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Fortinet.

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