Fortinet announces next-gen firewall and secure SD-WAN integration for Microsoft Azure

Fri, 19th Nov 2021

FYI, this story is more than a year old

Fortinet has announced the expansion of its collaboration with Microsoft to deliver what it says is the industry's first next-generation firewall and secure SD-WAN integration with Microsoft Azure Virtual WAN.

According to the cybersecurity solutions firm, customers can now – for the first time ever from any vendor – apply advanced security policies to virtual WAN traffic and extend secure SD-WAN into the Azure Virtual WAN hub.

The result is the convergence of advanced security and networking capabilities in the cloud for a more simplified, automated, and secure cloud on-ramp and SD-WAN experience. The integration also allows enterprises to more effectively interconnect with applications and workloads running Azure with the rest of their hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.

"Partnering with Microsoft Azure gives our joint customers the best of both worlds combining Azure's secure infrastructure with Fortinet's industry-leading next-generation firewall capabilities and best-in-class Secure SD-WAN solution," says Fortinet EVP of products and CMO, John Maddison.

"The integration of FortiGate-VM extends the Fortinet Security Fabric into Azure Virtual WAN and enhances our ability to secure any application on any cloud and to secure the cloud on-ramp into, between, and within the cloud."

According to Fortinet, the integration of FortiGate-VM and Fortinet Secure SD-WAN into Azure Virtual WAN empowers organisations to achieve their desired digital innovation outcomes in the cloud while reducing complexity.

Specifically, this integration enables IT and security professionals to easily configure networking and security in Microsoft Azure and delivers the following benefits:

Advanced security for Virtual WAN traffic
FortiGate-VM allows security policies to extend to traffic within the Azure Virtual WAN hub to enable better, more secure application experiences for users and branch offices by supporting encrypted data transports, granular segmentation and application-layer protection against advanced threats, and seamless overlay network with uniform policies across multi-clouds.
One-click deployment
Azure Virtual WAN integration provides one-click deployment and easy scalability for FortiGate-VM in Azure. With this integration, customers can select, configure, and deploy FortiGate virtual machines directly from the Azure Marketplace or from within the Azure Virtual WAN interface, allowing security to be part of the workflow for setting up a Virtual WAN in Azure.
Securely interconnect applications and workloads across clouds
Azure Virtual WAN provides a global network transit backbone for branch-to-branch connectivity, readily interconnecting regions together. Customers looking to deploy hybrid and multi-cloud networks that include Azure can now easily and securely interconnect applications and workloads, further extending the benefits of the Fortinet Security Fabric and Fortinet Secure SD-WAN across their entire infrastructure to enable consistent policies and centralised visibility. This simplifies security management, enables global visibility into security events and policies, and improves the quality of experience for users and customers.

Earlier this month, Fortinet and Microsoft also announced the availability of FortiGate-VM integration with Azure gateway load-balancer, which enables customers to deliver superior experiences for applications and workloads running in Azure.