Recapping the evolution of FortiGate CNF over the last two years

[aallisonftnt]

Recapping the evolution of FortiGate CNF over the last two years

FortiGate CNF, our SaaS-based firewall as a service, has grown rapidly with new features and improvements over the past two years. In this FortiGate form factor, we’ve eliminated the operational overhead required to deploy, manage, and maintain the underlying firewall infrastructure, so you can secure your cloud networks with ease and enjoy the simplicity of a cloud-native firewall service. These recent additions are designed to further streamline your cloud network security management and enhance your overall experience with FortiGate CNF. 

FortiGate CNF saw the following new features in 2023:

1. Onboarding Wizard: Simplify your setup process with the onboarding wizard, which guides you through adding AWS accounts, creating policy sets, and deploying instances (Fortinet Docs).
2. Version Rollback: Beyond the ability to schedule upgrades, you now have the ability to roll back to previous versions of your instances, ensuring greater flexibility and control during upgrades (Fortinet Docs).
3. FortiManager Integration: Centralized management across multiple FortiGate CNF instances directly from FortiManager is now supported (Fortinet Docs).
4. Multiple Log Targets: You can now configure multiple logging targets per instance, among which are Syslog, FortiAnalyzer, Amazon S3, and Amazon Security Lake - improving the flexibility of your log management and compliance (Fortinet Docs).
5. Various usability enhancements: FortiGate CNF has added a new health dashboard, a new troubleshooting capability and an improved onboarding wizard integrated with AWS QuickLaunch (Fortinet Docs).
6. Dynamic Security Policies: Automatically adjust policies using Internet Service Database (ISDB) objects and dynamic metadata tags, giving you greater control and adaptability in cloud environments (Fortinet Docs).
7. Intrusion Prevention System (IPS): FortiGate CNF now includes IPS capabilities to detect and block threats in real-time, bolstering your network protection (Fortinet Docs).
8. REST API Enhancements: Expanded API functionality allows for automated management of infrastructure and cloud accounts (Fortinet Docs).
9. Backup and Restore Functionality: FortiGate CNF instances can now be backed up and created from backed up templates. This capability is important when moving between subscription types or deployment environments. (Fortinet Docs).
10. Geo Expansion: FortiGate CNF became available in additional regions, including Zurich/eu-central-2 , Asia Pacific (Singapore)/ap-southeast-1, Israel (Tel Aviv)/il-central-1 (Fortinet Docs).

In 2024, FortiGate CNF also saw:

1. Cost-Optimized Instances: FortiGate CNF now offers more affordable instance options without sacrificing performance – saving you up to 50% (Fortinet Docs).
2. Customizable S3 Log Target Regions: Improve compliance with regional data regulations by selecting the S3 target region for log storage (Fortinet Docs).
3. Audit Log Enhancements: Easily export and search audit logs for better tracking and visibility of security events (Fortinet Docs).
4. Geo Expansion: FortiGate CNF is now available in additional regions, including Canada Central and São Paulo (Fortinet Docs).
5. DNS Filtering for Azure: FortiGate CNF now supports DNS filtering in Azure environments, enhancing your cloud-native protection options (Fortinet Docs).
6. Packet Capture Usability: Troubleshooting is now easier with improved packet capture functionality (Fortinet Docs).
7. Azure Support: FortiGate CNF is now available on the Azure marketplace and is integrated with Azure gateway load balancers (Fortinet Docs).
8. Dynamic Policies Using Tags and ISDB Objects: Define adaptive policies based on tags and ISDB objects, enabling you to respond quickly to changes in your cloud resources (Fortinet Docs).
9. Simplified Pricing: A new simplified pricing model makes budgeting and planning for FortiGate CNF services more straightforward (Fortinet Docs).

These new features reflect our commitment to continually enhancing your security posture and operations of cloud environments.

Interested in learning more and taking a free 30-day trial? Head over to AWS Marketplace to get started!