Free reports to disappear in September?

[Antoine]

Since August 10th, there is an appendix in the daily reports I am receiving from my free FortiGateCloud account:

Dear customer,
please kindly be aware that this report type will cease to be available on FortiGate with free FortiCloud Service subscription starting from 22.3.c release scheduled for the coming September. To avoid any disruption on receiving the report going forward, we would recommend you add a FortiCloud Service subscription [... more marketing material follow]

There is also a small blurb (in blue font) at the beginning of each report, saying:

This report type will cease to be available on Fortigate without FortigateCloud subscription starting from the coming September.For more information, please see appendix.

On Sunday I received the weekly reports (I have several more selected), and it appears the only one which will survive is the 360 Degree Activities Report.

However, I cannot encounter any information about this change while browsing (but I do not pretend I spend a lot of time at it).

In the case we do not abide to the paid service (looks like $600/year/device; cannot localize a EU vendor for it, but I do not expect $1=€1 rate ☹; and for the smallest models, it is difficult to justify the cost), what are the available options?

[Muhammad_Haiqal]

Hi @Antoine ,

You may consider to use FortiAnalyzer or your own Syslog server.

For syslog server, Fortigate will send raw logs to the server. Based on the information received, server will generate logs.

If you need to understand more about the solution, feel free to engage with Fortinet local partner to assist you.

[Antoine]

Hi @Muhammad_Haiqal representing Fortinet:

Thanks for your input.

However buying (then configuring, then maintaining) a FAZ which is 10 times the price of the FG is not exactly the kind of solution I am expecting. In fact, since in my eyes FortiGate Cloud is very much a SaaS version of a FAZ, a small business like us would be much better served going for the paid version of the cloud product we are already using.

Regarding syslog, since this is a Windows shop and we are not currently using it for anything, avoiding its complexity is exactly why I went to FortiGate Cloud several years ago, and I always was very satisfied with this decision: not that I cannot set up a syslog solution, but rather that I avoided spending much time to set it up. Again, I am sure the investment in it, while being more difficult to measure, is certainly one order of magnitude bigger than going to the paying cloud offer.

Regarding my local "partner", first this is August and in Southern Europe it means a noticeable delay before we can conduct useful business; and delays are not exactly wanted in this case, due to the pretty short notice Fortinet is giving us (may be as short as 3 weeks). Furthermore, it occurs to me that if my local partner had any interest about "solutions", they would certainly have contacted me long time ago, when this stuff was planned to occur or more exactly when they were informed of it. Absent it, I can only deduce they do not have any ready-to-sell solution.

[Muhammad_Haiqal]

Hi @Antoine ,

Thank you for the information. I agree with you. Its a small network and simplicity is the  best in your case. From my understanding, you are using free Forticloud which is expected to have limited storage and features. Please be informed, Free/trial version is to provide some insight on the capability of the service. 

You may consider to contact official Fortinet Partner here to assist further:
https://partnerportal.fortinet.com/directory/

Let me know if you need more information.