By Tim Fitzgerald, Channel Director, Fortinet Australia
Your clients need your help. They are moving more and more of their mission-critical and everyday applications into multiple clouds. Public, private, hybrid, Iaas, SaaS, software-defined, you name it. All with different platforms, procedures and, of course, security environments. The cloud significantly expands their attack surface. They can’t possibly keep up, regardless of their size or industry.
They are looking to you, their trusted network security advisor, to ensure that their multi-cloud environment operates as required. That means reducing the risk of data loss, corruption or theft and keeping out malware that could impact network operations
The best way to do this is to partner with a vendor, such as Fortinet, that offers a Security Fabric to help reduce your business and cybersecurity risk to a more acceptable level.
A simple question: Do you know where all your data and applications are hosted?
Go ahead. Ask that very question to your client’s CIO or IT team leader. If they can give you a straight answer, good on them! Then ask them if they know how their applications interact with their data and how secure the connection is. It’s the rare organisation indeed that can answer that question with confidence. And, of course, if they’re unsure about any of it, it’s a cry for help.
Data, application and security audits
Start with security. What type of security services do they currently employ? Do they extend into their cloud-based operations? Are they up-to-date? Do they communicate with each other? And how are these security services delivered?
Then move into the various cloud providers. How much data and how many apps are hosted off-site? What type of security do the hosts employ? Any visibility into the host’s environment? Redundancy? Disaster recovery planning? Legal jurisdictions? Any compliance requirements?
Security gaps equal sales opportunities
Once you have a rough estimate of the scope of your client’s cloud-based operations and their current security profile you can start to identify gaps in coverage. These gaps are your invitation to propose Fortinet’s Multi-Cloud Security Services.
Fortinet’s Multi-Cloud Security Services
Fortinet’s Multi-Cloud Security Services – which you can sell to clients on a CAPEX or OPEX (as a service) basis - address the expanded attack surface across on-premise data centre / private clouds, public clouds and IaaS and SaaS applications.
Fortinet’s Multi-Cloud Security consists of five components:
- FortiGate Virtual Firewall
- FortiGate Cloud Firewall
- FortiWeb Cloud
- FortiCASB (cloud access security broker)
- Fortinet Connectors
The FortiGate Virtual Firewall is for private clouds. The Cloud Firewall secures public and IaaS clouds. FortiWeb Cloud protects web applications and is available on an ‘as a service’ basis. FortiCASB is a cloud-delivered service for securing SaaS apps and Fortinet Connectors are additional software components that provide cloud or SDN integration for FortiGate or other Fortinet appliances.
No other vendor has a comparable range of security services nor the channel-centric models for delivering these services.
Conclusion
If you understand your client’s multi-cloud security service requirements you can sell them the exact Fortinet security service to protect components in their network. CAPEX, OPEX, virtual, physical, software-defined, APIs or hosted on multiple clouds. Makes no difference. Fortinet has all bases covered.
Your goal should be to reduce the cybersecurity risk for your customer. And, in doing so, you can capture every dollar that your client spends on security that isn’t Fortinet.
Your client will thank you for it. And keep coming back for more.
About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organisations around the world. Fortinet empowers its customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network - today and into the future. Only the Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud or mobile environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped worldwide and more than 375,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses. Learn more at http://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.
Fortinet solutions are distributed in Australia by Exclusive Networks, Ingram Micro and Wavelink.
For more Brand Posts in the Fortinet Security Insight series, click here.
About the author
Credit: Fortinet Tim Fitzgerald is Fortinet’s Australian Channel Director. As such, he is responsible for driving Fortinet’s continued expansion in the channel through building and maintaining relationships with clients, partners and staff. He understands the risks, motivations and opportunities that face Australian businesses as they transform their networks into 21st century revenue centres.
