Fortinet Delivers Advanced Cybersecurity to Software-Defined Data Centers

Fortinet's FortiGate VMX with VMware NSX Enables Automated Policy-Driven Network Segmentation for the Data Center

Dubai, UAE, December 13, 2015 – Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT) – the global leader in high-performance cybersecurity solutions, today announced their FortiGate VMX next-generation and internal segmentation firewall (NGFW/ISFW). The FortiGate VMX with the VMware NSX® network virtualization platform enables organizations to automate advanced cybersecurity in the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC).

Advanced Security for Dynamic Data Centers

Working in collaboration with VMware, Fortinet developed the FortiGate VMX to fully leverage the capabilities of the VMware NSX network virtualization platform, enabling customers to automate the insertion, deployment and orchestration of FortiGate VMX for threat protection inside their data center environments.

“NTT Com Security has been working closely with our clients and industry leaders like Fortinet to leverage the security benefits of network virtualization,” said Dave Polton, chief technology architect at NTT Com Security. “Bringing cloud and security technologies together with the VMware vSphere and VMware NSX platforms enables our clients to benefit from greater security and efficiency as we transition them to a fully Software-Defined Data Centre (SDDC), while empowering our customers with even better levels of managed service.”

Policy Driven Network Segmentation

Recent high-profile security breaches have highlighted the need for security solutions that expand beyond the traditional edge defense strategies and segment networks internally, avoiding the rapid spread of threats once inside the data center. VMware brings an SDDC approach to network security with micro-segmentation, isolating communications across unrelated networks, controlling the communications within a network and integrating with advanced security services like Fortinet's Internal Segmentation Firewalls (ISFW).

The native security capabilities of VMware NSX, including micro-segmentation, distributed firewalling and security operations automation, enable policy-based segmentation of network traffic and threat protection at the workload level controls for East-West traffic. The NSX distributed service framework enables dynamic insertion of Fortinet's ISFW/NGFW technologies using Fortinet's Network Security Function Virtualization (NSFV) feature. Based on Virtual Domain (VDOM) technologies, a multi-tenant system can be defined with different security policies enabled. This granular approach enables service providers and larger enterprises to set up per-customer or per-business unit security policies. Fortinet also provides high-speed, north-south network security appliances, providing a holistic data center solution under a single policy model. 

“Fortinet has been working closely with VMware to arm customers with the same level of cybersecurity inside the data center as they do at the perimeter. FortiGate VMX demonstrates our commitment to the VMware partnership and ecosystem,” said John Maddison, vice president of products and solutions at Fortinet.