Interaction-Vivek Srivastava, Country Manager, India & SAARC, Fortinet

How does Fortinet envision AI and automation in cybersecurity operations evolving to address the growing complexity of cyber threats in India and the broader Asia-Pacific region?

 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a foundational element of Fortinet's cybersecurity strategy, which is crucial in enhancing our threat detection and response capabilities. Fortinet has been a leader in AI development for over a decade, utilizing a comprehensive range of machine learning and deep learning technologies to address the evolving challenges of the threat landscape. Our AI capabilities power over 40 solutions across our extensive security and networking portfolio, benefiting over 700,000 customers worldwide. These AI-powered offerings, including FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services, FortiAIOps, FortiEDR, FortiNDR, and FortiAnalyzer, play a pivotal role in zero-day threat detection, sophisticated attack remediation, and enhancing IT teams' ability to resolve security and networking issues proactively.

The introduction of GenAI through Fortinet Advisor marks a significant advancement in our AI capabilities, enabling SecOps teams to interact directly with AI systems. This interaction enhances threat detection, analysis, and response, streamlines report generation, builds playbooks, and facilitates the remediation of vulnerable and compromised systems. GenAI is an essential tool for SecOps teams, empowering them to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated cyber adversaries.

The survey reveals that many organizations struggle with resourcing their IT security teams adequately. How does Fortinet propose to support businesses in India in building and maintaining proficient security teams to tackle evolving cyber threats?

Security teams often grapple with two major challenges: the overwhelming volume of alerts and the growing number of sophisticated attacks that evade detection using legitimate credentials or multi-stage processes. These challenges are compounded by the industry-wide cyber skill shortage, putting additional strain on already overwhelmed security teams.

Fortinet's approach to addressing these challenges involves leveraging AI and the integrated Fortinet Security Fabric to enhance threat detection and response capabilities. The AI built into our technologies addresses various threat vectors, and the integration across the Security Fabric enables the sharing of threat intelligence, facilitating a coordinated response to sophisticated malware, ransomware, and zero-day attacks. Our FortiGuard Labs research team continuously develops new AI to process and analyze the ever-increasing global threat data, sharing new protections as actionable real-time threat intelligence.

In our Security Operation Centre (SOC) offerings, AI plays a crucial role in automating and optimizing security processes. Solutions such as FortiSOAR and FortiSIEM, integral to our SOC offerings, enable the streamlining of security workflows and reduce the time and effort required for threat detection and response.

By automating routine tasks, security analysts can concentrate on more complex and strategic activities, thereby enhancing the overall efficiency and effectiveness of our security operations. AI also aids in the correlation and analysis of security data, enabling our customers to identify patterns and trends that may indicate emerging threats. This proactive approach, powered by AI, is a key factor in our ability to provide robust and resilient cybersecurity solutions.

With automation gaining prominence in security operations, what are Fortinet's plans to assist organizations in India in optimizing their automation processes effectively, as indicated by the survey respondents' intentions to focus on this area in the coming months?

Fortinet has enhanced its SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS) offering by incorporating more AI and ML capabilities into additional use cases. These updates improve the offering's ability to aggregate security alerts in a single cloud-based dashboard, providing customers with actionable intelligence and accelerating resolution. This approach also enables security operations teams to offload monitoring and detection tasks to Fortinet security experts, speeding up alert triage, rapidly escalating security incidents, and reducing false-positive alerts.

Fortinet's new outbreak detection service promptly alerts subscribers via email and directly within key product interfaces about significant cybersecurity events, providing essential details such as an attack's timeline, affected technology, and custom threat hunting for assessing the attack's potential impact.

Alongside, we've enhanced our Incident Response offering with cybersecurity readiness services, prioritizing prevention with tools like risk assessments and tabletop exercises, thereby bolstering cyber preparedness and reducing risks. Furthermore, our AI-driven solutions continuously evolve with real-time updates from FortiGuard Labs, ensuring swift adaptation to new threats and minimizing vulnerabilities. This exemplifies our commitment to leading the industry with proactive, AI-integrated cybersecurity defenses.

How does Fortinet's partner program align with the findings of the recent IDC survey on the state of Security Operations (SecOps) in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly concerning the challenges and priorities highlighted by organizations in India?

The IDC State of SecOps report highlights that customers are seeking partners who can provide expertise in implementing the right technologies and support their security operations teams in reducing the time to respond to threats. Fortinet's SecOps Fabric applies AI And ML and integration across the expanded digital attack surface with distributed security controls spanning network, endpoint, application, and cloud.

This approach detects components and activity designed to bypass traditional security and hide among legitimate operations, while a centralized approach to broader investigation and response speeds an organization’s return to safe operation.

Our Engage Partner Program provides partners with the flexibility to choose their preferred business model and area of specialization, whether as an integrator, MSSP, or cloud service provider. An MSSP partner focuses on developing services around Fortinet products and emphasizes a consumption-based service model, providing and managing both technology and expertise for their customers. Integrators, on the other hand, may deliver capex-oriented solutions.

We also offer specializations for partners around technologies such as SD-WAN, Security Operations, and Operational Technology, allowing them to choose the expertise they want to demonstrate, the business model, and the right specialization to align customer requirements with their internal business strategies for delivering advanced cybersecurity technologies.

In light of the survey's emphasis on the increasing adoption of AI and automation in cybersecurity operations, how does Fortinet's partner program support partners in India to leverage these technologies effectively to address the evolving threat landscape?

According to the State of SecOps survey report, organizations are prioritizing security operations investments in the next 12 months, with top priorities including boosting network and endpoint security, empowering staff cyber awareness, elevating threat hunting and response, updating critical systems, and performing security audits. These priorities align with the evolving threat landscape and underscore the strategic focus on comprehensive cybersecurity measures.

Partners have a significant business opportunity this year in implementing Fortinet Security Operations solutions. An ESG report indicates that customers who have implemented Fortinet SecOps solutions have realized significant savings and benefits, with substantial reductions in the time to identify, triage, contain, investigate, and remediate threats using Fortinet's integrated approach and advanced behavioral analytics.

Fortinet is committed to working closely with our partners to help them understand the evolving cybersecurity needs and train them to effectively address customer requirements. This collaboration ensures that our partners are well-equipped to implement and manage Fortinet's advanced Security Operations solutions, providing robust protection for their customers in the face of a constantly changing threat landscape.

How does Fortinet's partner program facilitate training and skill enhancement for partners in India to meet the changing demands of the cybersecurity domain, as highlighted by the survey respondents' challenges related to skill development?

Fortinet has updated its Network Security Expert Certification program for partners with a focus on more role-based training that is aligned to in-demand technology, such as Cloud Security and Security Operations Center (SOC) Analysts.

Fortinet’s NSE Certification program includes a wide range of self-paced and instructor-led training courses, along with practical exercises that demonstrate mastery of complex network security concepts. When partners focus on the NSE Certification program, they are building their expertise on Fortinet’s technology while expanding and advancing their knowledge to meet their customers’ security needs. It also allows partners faster access to Engage Specializations, and the associated benefits.

This gives partners the flexibility to grow their services and expertise as their business expands and also supports their goals for resource efficiency and profitability. As an example, our Fortinet Certified Engineer (FCE) certification goes into specialized cybersecurity solutions that map Zero Trust Access, Network Security, Public Cloud Security, Security Operations, and OT Security. Fortinet Certified Professional (FCP) takes a deep dive into role-based training with the ability to take coursework that aligns with Network Security, Public Cloud Security, and Security Operations.

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