Fortinet unveiled its latest FortiOS operating system update at the Accelerate 2023 event today,  a move designed to enhance automation and internal integration across all its security products. The update also reinforces Fortinet's networking and security convergence vision by unifying management and analytics across its secure networking portfolio.

FortiOS is an integral part of Fortinet’s Security Fabric, which is the vendor’s security platform that pairs its software with hardware running on its custom ASICs and comprises over 50 products across networks, endpoints and clouds.

Fortinet CMO and EVP of Product John Maddison claims the new FortiOS 7.4 offers better platform integration than version 7.2. It “enables more of this kind of come together work, so that the SD-WAN works with the SASE [secure access service edge] that works with the firewalls that work with zero trust, and it’s all working on our ForOS platform,” he told SDxCentral, adding the platform helps customers “start moving down this secure networking track.”

This move aligns with Fortinet's long-standing vision of converging networking and security. “Fortinet was founded over 20 years ago with the goal of converging networking and security into secure networking solutions,” Fortinet Founder and CEO Ken Xie said in a statement. “Today we’re deepening unified management and analytics across our secure networking portfolio to give CIOs unprecedented levels of visibility and enforcement across their entire environment — whether on-premises, in the cloud or a hybrid of both.”

Fortinet saw this convergence continue to accelerate, Maddison said. “Customers are realizing that they can't manage 30 different security vendors inside their infrastructure. It's very complex. It's very slow. It’s lots of people involved.”

This “platform-orientated” trend benefits large security companies like Fortinet, enabling them to capture more market share, he added. “We're still growing at a reasonable percentage given our size.”

And Fortinet differentiates itself from other vendors who build platforms through acquisitions, Maddison touted. “The only way you can really build a unified console is to do it organically.”

In addition to convergence support, FortiOS 7.4 also bolsters a number of automation upgrades for the vendor's endpoint security, security operations center (SOC) as-a-service, threat intelligence, identity and access, and application security services. New Security Fabric additions include supply chain risk and external attack surface monitoring service FortiRecon and artificial intelligence (AI) powered network detection and response FortiNDR Cloud.

Fortinet’s networking and security convergence version is also reflected in its single-vendor SASE push. To streamline the experience, the vendor now integrates FortiSASE with its centralized management solution FortiManager.

FortiManager already manages the vendor’s FortiGate next-generation firewalls, SD-WAN, WLAN/LAN, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) products as its “uber console.” However, Fortinet had to build a separate console for SASE since it is a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS), explained Maddison.

To unify the management and analytics, the vendor synced the SASE management functionality with FortiManager, “which has the ultimate final say on the policy and security updates and everything else,” he said.

He added that “our security updates can be applied now to all these locations, so as these edges are formed across the network, whether it be the SaaS edge, cloud edge, operational technology edge, branch edge, you can apply the security stack how you want to those edges.”

As new technologies emerge and threats evolve, education is essential, Maddison noted.

Fortinet established the NSE Certification program in 2015 as part of its commitment to address the security skills gap. To align with talent demands for specialized skills, such as cloud security specialists and SOC analysts, the vendor updated the program to focus on more role-based training.

“We got a lot of requests for people to be more specialized, so the previous version … you kind of had to select the modules to get a specialized view. And so now we've created these specialized courses for SD-WAN or SOC, for example, so they don't have to go and pick and choose. They can just say I just want to be an expert in this area. ”Maddison said.