When discussing our Fortinet Security Fabric, we often focus heavily on the integration between the solutions across our own product suite. And why not? The Fortinet Security Fabric spans multiple solutions, is seamlessly integrated, provides dynamic automation, and is supported by a single company – all good things.
But an essential element of the Security Fabric is its ability to also integrate with other products found in many customer environments. That’s why we also sponsor the Open Fabric Ecosystem, which is one of the largest cybersecurity ecosystems in the industry. It is comprised of Fabric-Ready technology alliance partners whose solutions are also fully integrated into the Security Fabric, collaboration with threat-sharing organizations, open APIs and commons standards to facilitate integration with other third-party solutions, and other Fabric integrations. This ecosystem approach enables organizations to integrate a wide variety of security and networking solutions with the Security Fabric, enabling them to establish and maintain advanced end-to-end security across their entire digital infrastructure.
Part of this ecosystem approach also involves working with major vendors to build ways to seamlessly integrate the Security Fabric into their platforms. Recently, the Fortinet Solution Architects worked with Microsoft to validate and document an integrated solution that allows for the rapid deployment of a secure teleworker solution using FortiGate, FortiClient, and Microsoft Azure AD plus Microsoft Authenticator for two-factor authentication (2FA).
To make this integration possible, FortiGate and FortiClient 6.4.0 both support the SAML standard – part of our commitment to supporting common standards. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a standard for authenticating users into applications based on a session created in a separate context. You'll see SAML used extensively in cross-domain single sign-on (SSO) solutions.
Even still, putting together a SAML integrated solution is not for the faint of heart. While two technologies may both support SAML, not all implementations are the same. Getting the two to work together often involves rolling up the sleeves and diving deep into the technical documentation and addressing the variations between all associated vendor products.
Fortunately, Fortinet and Fabric-Ready technology alliance partner Microsoft were able to work as a team to resolve issues, create documentation, and even deliver a tutorial designed to ease the burden of deploying this solution on your own. By leveraging these resources, customers are now able to rapidly spin up secure remote access for their teleworkers while leveraging existing investments or adopting new cloud services from Fortinet and Microsoft.
Details on this new Fortinet/Microsoft validated solution can be found in the Azure Marketplace application gallery:
https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/aad.fortigatesslvpn?tab=overview
For the detailed tutorial and documentation, click "Get it now" in the page linked above, or download directly here:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/saas-apps/fortigate-ssl-vpn-tutorial
A security fabric is only as useful as its ability to span the entire distributed network. Close alliances with vendors such as Microsoft helps ensure that your Security Fabric strategy leaves no corner of your network unprotected.
Is this solution right for your company? Ask your Fortinet team about a Fortinet Consulting Services engagement to discuss all the possibilities for protecting your evolving network environment with a comprehensive Fortinet Security Fabric solution.
