Fortinet today announced a new line of SD-WAN appliances targeted at operational technology (OT) environments. The FortiGate Rugged 60F is designed to operate in remote locations that are not environmentally controlled.

As OT companies and information technology continue to converge, securing data from these locations is becoming more important, according to Fortinet CMO John Maddison.

The appliance is based on the FortiGate 60F, which was announced in November 2019. However, the rugged version of the appliance is designed to sustain extreme temperatures, electromagnetic interference, high moisture, or constant vibration. It also accepts nonstandard power sources and can be equipped with 4G LTE connectivity for locations where traditional connectivity isn't available.

The goal of Fortinet's Rugged-series appliances is to extend SD-WAN and security functions to any network edge whether it's a traditional branch or a construction site.

"In industries like manufacturing, power and utilities, oil and gas, and other critical infrastructure, their distributed locations have traditionally relied on expensive leased lines or MPLS circuits to provide secure, reliable communications," the company said in a statement.

With the FortiGate Rugged 60F, Fortinet aims to extend the security of its SD-WAN overlay to OT customers, enabling them to take advantage of broadband or 4G connectivity.

"We cannot allow an operational error or an external attack, because we have people working all the time, 24/7. The implementation of a security solution in our critical infrastructure, such as Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, has become essential," Andrés Koper, plant maintenance manager at Sullair Argentina, said in a statement.

Today's launch caps off a year packed with refreshed "Forti" appliances.

The company kicked off the year with the launch of its smallest appliance to date, the FortiGate 40F, which is designed for use in small retail and home office spaces.

Soon after the company launched the FortiGate 1800F, a hyperscale next-generation firewall designed to tackle huge amounts of traffic called elephant flows.

And this past summer the company took on the Fortune 1000 with a new branch appliance called the FortiGate 80F, a scaled up version of the 60F announced at the end of 2019.

Finally, the company announced a large enterprise and campus-focused next-generation firewall appliance dubbed the FortiGate 200F in October.

Fortinet's hardware-heavy approach to security was cause for some concern according to Gartner's latest firewall report. However, these concerns were curbed in part thanks to Fortinet's pivot to a secure access service edge (SASE) architecture.

Fortinet's acquisition of Opaq in July bought the company a more robust cloud-delivered security stack including zero-trust network access functionality that doesn't require an additional appliance.