Fortinet expanded its Security Fabric for OT portfolio with a new rugged next-generation firewall (NGFW), a breach detection appliance, and enhancements to its FortiPAM, FortiSIEM, FortiSOAR, and FortiGuard services to secure operational technology (OT) environments.

Nirav Shah, VP of products and solutions at Fortinet, explained via email that the new FortiGate 70F Rugged NGFW is designed for harsh environments, features a compact design running on a single processor, and is IP40 rated and certified for power, utility, and railway industry requirements.

Like other FortiGate NGFWs, the 70F firewall uses the vendor’s custom ASIC “to accelerate the convergence of networking and security capabilities and deliver higher performance, better security, and energy savings, and greater ROI [return on investment],” Shah touted.

Additionally, the 70F NGFW offers OT and IoT security services that are integrated with Fortinet’s SD-WAN, zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and LAN edge controllers, along with 5G support with FortiExtender.

“In IT/OT environments, zero trust is a critical component of a modern security strategy, and ZTNA is a key technology to extend zero-trust security principles to users and devices by controlling access to applications,” Shah explained.

“The FortiGate Rugged 70F series runs the latest FortiOS, which includes built-in ZTNA Application Gateway to verify identity, device posture, and user behavior before granting explicit access to the application,” he added. “Fortinet’s universal ZTNA approach enables IT/OT businesses to control application access policy whether users are on or off the network with a seamless user experience.”

Fortinet also launched its FortiDeceptor Rugged 100G Appliance for breach detection and enhanced its privileged access management (PAM) capabilities for secure remote access.

“OT organizations often have a large amount of critical assets, such as servers, network devices, or IoT devices that require secure access,” Shah noted. “But because OT devices generally do not have strong built-in security, and sometimes static or infrequently changed passwords, it’s critical to ensure that only authorized users can get secured access.”

The vendor’s FortiPAM is designed to “manage credentials for all their critical assets, control user access to these assets with role-based access controls (RBACs), and provide security to these assets in the form of ZTNA controls using FortiClient and monitor and audit all access,” Shah added.

The service supports a password vault to manage all credentials and offers to automatically change asset passwords based on policy. It also integrates with FortiAuthenticator and FortiToken to allow users to enable other zero-trust capabilities such as single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Fortinet's latest State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity Report showed that 93% of organizations had one or more security intrusions in the past year, with 61% of intrusions affecting OT systems.

“Operational technology environments are more connected to the cloud and their supply chains than ever before, which has created a huge opportunity for cyberattackers,” Fortinet CMO John Maddison noted in a statement. “Traditional information security products are not well suited for cyber-physical security.”

To address this issue, the vendor offers the Fortinet Security Fabric, which “reduces management complexity and is integrated with an open ecosystem of more than 500 solutions from over 350 vendors, including industrial automation and control system vendors, for seamless integration with third-party OT solutions,” Shah said.

The vendor also upgraded its security information and event management (SIEM); security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR); and industrial security services to help security operations center (SOC) teams provide a faster response in OT environments.