Fortinet has announced significant cloud-delivered enhancements to FortiSASE, the most integrated single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) solution on the market the company states.

According to Gartner, Single-vendor SASE delivers converged network and security capabilities to connect and secure distributed users, devices, and locations to resources in the cloud, edge, and on-premises.

It has emerged as a key architecture to secure remote users, ensure consistent user experience, and shift from a capital expenditure (CAPEX) to an operational expenditure (OPEX) business model. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, one-third of new SASE deployments will be based on a single-vendor SASE offering, up from 10% in 2022.

Fortinet was recognised by Gartner as a Representative Vendor in the inaugural Market Guide for Single-Vendor SASE.

FortiSASE is designed to consolidate point products by converging cloud-delivered networking (SD-WAN) and cloud-delivered security (SSE composed of secure web gateway, universal zero trust network access (ZTNA), cloud access security broker (CASB), and Firewall-as-a-Service) via a single operating system (FortiOS) and single agent (FortiClient), with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) layered across to drive additional operational efficiency.

According to Fortinet, Iin addition to enabling secure internet access that is not only fast but ensures consistent security for all user traffic to and from the internet, FortiSASE now includes new updates that add enhanced support for secure private access and secure Software as a Service (SaaS) access use cases.

Secure private access

Leveraging its success via Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, Fortinet is now extending this convergence to remote users via cloud-delivered SD-WAN connectivity in FortiSASE.

This extends Fortinet's existing ability to deliver granular application access with Fortinet Universal ZTNA by adding broader application access with SD-WAN to support the most comprehensive set of private applications running at the data centre or public cloud, while also ensuring superior user experience.

According to the company, this enhancement makes FortiSASE the industry's most flexible architecture for secure and reliable access to privately hosted applications by leveraging both ZTNA and SD-WAN.

With this news, organisations that have already deployed Fortinet Secure SD-WAN and/or FortiGate Next-Generation Firewalls in the branch or data centre can connect their remote users to FortiSASE for private access without needing an additional licence.

Secure SaaS access

FortiSASE delivers comprehensive visibility and control for SaaS applications, now enhanced with next-generation dual-mode CASB. By leveraging both inline and API-based support, FortiSASE enables full visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned applications to address shadow IT and data exfiltration challenges.

Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst at ESG, says, “Modern IT and employee environments are highly distributed and require secure connectivity and access, regardless of where users or applications are located.

"To provide these services, organisations must have comprehensive, tightly integrated, network and security solutions. Fortinet understands this and has implemented a single operating system (OS) and agent across its entire cloud-based SASE portfolio, plus it has layered in AI/ML technologies to drive greater operational efficiencies and deliver enhanced user experiences."