When implementing a cybersecurity platform in your organization, it’s important to think of “platform” as a journey…from point products to a functional platform to a platform suite…even to dual sourcing. And when considering a platform solution, you want to ensure it’s truly comprised of one operating system, one management console, one analytics engine, one data lake and uniform APIs underpinning the platform. To discuss the platform journey through a security lens, what a platform even means to its customers and what he sees as the most beneficial features and use cases for organizations, SDxCentral contributor Jeff Vance is joined here by John Maddison, CMO and EVP of products for Fortinet. Maddison has more than 30 years of executive management experience in the cybersecurity and telecommunications industries. He joined Fortinet in 2012 to lead cloud/SaaS security development teams and is now the chief marketing officer. He previously held executive leadership positions at Trend Micro, and he started his career with Lucent Technologies mobile division, Hewlett Packard Software and Cable & Wireless global networking. In the interview, Maddison and Vance also touch on the following, among other topics:

• Security is always a rapidly evolving market sector. As threats shift, new security tools emerge, with startups often pushing those new tools, leading the charge to counter emerging threats. How can platform providers accommodate businesses that require the emerging protections provided by these cutting-edge, new technologies that aren't yet integrated into platforms?
• Fortinet is in the rare position of being in several of Gartner's Magic Quadrants, and is a leader in many of them. Furthermore, with one operating system across all of those technologies. How does Fortinet help customers that have historically needed to go with different vendors for each of those functions?
• For many large enterprises, legacy constraints are a way of life. Some businesses can move most of their workloads to the cloud and shift most of their networking and security to best-in-class service providers, but not everything. How should businesses with legacy constraints approach the migration to platforms?
• Why has there been such a high barrier for networking vendors to build up the security functionality, or, on the flip side, are security vendors following in your steps and developing the networking technology with security built in?