What’s new in FortiOS 6.0

I wrote about what’s new in FortiOS 5.6 one year ago but most FortiGate firewalls in a production environment are still in FortiOS 5.4. However, most security engineers are already upgrading to FortiOS 5.6 but, meanwhile, Fortinet goes ahead because the new security operating system FortiOS 6.0 is going to be released next weeks. This new operating system comes with more than 200 features and capabilities that has been designed to provide the broad visibility, integrated threat intelligence, and automated response required for digital business. As I’ve already attended an online sessions to know new features and improvements, I’m going to highlight the most interesting features.

FortiOS 6.0 Dashboard

One of the enhanced features is Security Fabric which extends beyond the boundaries of firewalls and even network security. It includes some new integrations, including Fabric inclusion of FortiMail, expanding local caching capacity seamlessly with FortiCache and a new CASB product. The Security Fabric is also designed to shrink the windows from both intrusion to detection and detection to response. Therefore, automation comes from a new User-Defined Automation feature where triggers take immediate actions in the form of quarantines, configuration changes, reports, or other notifications.

Configuring Automation

Bandwidth management is a must and Multi-path intelligence for SD-WAN, or Software Defined WAN, has also been enhanced in FortiOS 6.0 with SLA controls to measure application transactions, ensuring critical applications travel on the best of the multiple branch links. SD-WAN ensures performance for SaaS, VoIP, and critical business applications as well as automated fail-over capabilities. In addition, new one-touch VPN and zero-touch deployment further reduce complexity and rapidly enable new enterprise branches.

Best of breed SD-WAN

 

Another powerful enhanced feature is Multi-Cloud Security where connectors within Security Fabric provide full visibility across multi-cloud environments, including private cloud connectors, public cloud connectors and SaaS clouds with CASB connectors. For instance, FortiCASB (Cloud Access Security Broker) offers visibility and advanced threat protection of Software-as-as-Service (SaaS) applications such as Salesforce.com, Office 365, Dropbox, Box, AWS and more. It is also integrated with AV and FortiCloud Sandbox for extended protection and detection capabilities.

FortiCASB for Office365

 

Asset Tagging is a new feature in FortiOS 6.0 which allows us to tag devices, interfaces, and objects with business context, so we can logically manage the traffic, despite the tempest of change at the physical layer. The tagging capability tags interfaces and objects then security policies are automatically invoked when these objects are created. Asset Tagging introduces business precise dynamic network segmentation through tagging that logically separates data and resources where we can set global policies for automatic enforcement.

Intent based network security

Last but not least, new FortiGuard Protection Services are available such as a list of compromised hosts from the Indicators of Compromise (IOC) service, automatic removal of malicious scripts in files from the Content Disarm & Reconstruction (CDR) service which proactively strips potentially malicious content embedded in Microsoft Office and Adobe files to sanitize the most common file formats, and the new Virus Outbreak Protection Service (VOS) which closes the gap between antivirus updates with FortiCloud Sandbox analysis to detect and stop malware threats.

FortiGuard Protection Services

 

Regards my friends; new firewall operating system, new features, go ahead.