Forticlient and Fortigate versions

[zabuza88]

Should I be keeping my Fortigate firewall and forticlient versions the same? I updated our forticlient vpn to 7.0.2 but our Fortigate firewall is still on 6.2.3. Does that matter at all?

[naibaho]

Hi zabuza88

I think it doesn't matter. I my self and my client using Forticlient 7.0.2 while my Fortigate on 6.4.1. There is no issue found.

[Debbie_FTNT]

Hey zabuza,

it depends a bit on what you're trying to achieve.

For VPN it shouldn't matter too much if there is a version mismatch, but an older version does mean that newest encryption cyphers might not be supported and the connection is not as secure as it would be with both FortiGate and FortiClient up to date.

If you intend to use more features of FortiClient - integration with Security Fabric, endpoint control through EMS, etc - then you will likely need to have FortiGate and FortiClient on the same major release at least (6.4.x or 7.0.x for example).

For those scenarios, there should be notes on compatibililty between FortiClient/EMS and FortiGate versions in the product release notes on docs.fortinet.com.