Over 2,500 CISOs and other leaders in IT security attended the annual Gartner Security & Risk Summit in National Harbor, MD. We had the privilege to not only meet with customers at the event but to also attend several sessions and speak with numerous Gartner subject matter experts about trends in the market. Judging from that, here are some key highlights for us:
- XDR language was everywhere, and diverse. Many attendees were not sure what XDR is and were looking for definitions. We think many vendors had conflicting positioning, often quite different than Gartner’s definition in the XDR market guide. It was a modern example of the proverbial blind men trying to explain their part of the elephant. We feel our XDR is closely aligned with Gartner expectations and will be a market leader as industry adoption continues to accelerate. With market penetration being around 1%, you can ignore those who claim to be an XDR leader. For now, we suggest focusing on what makes you more secure while automating what you can which is the goal of XDR. You can ignore the term if it is distracting as long as you focus on the goal.
- Tools like EDR are loved but take significant work. With lean teams, attendees were looking into managed services like MDR or Managed EDR. According to Gartner’s Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response Services, 50% of organizations will be using an MDR service by 2025 either through a platform company like Fortinet or through an MSSP which is a conservative estimate to some. FortiResponder services provide this managed EDR for your organization with 100% internal staff located around the world in each region, staffed 365 days a year.
- Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a convergence story. The pandemic forced a lot of changes and we believe that 70% of organizations will be using a SASE by 2023. Along those lines, expect a lot of vendor consolidation as people start to merge SD-WAN, ZTNA, CASB, FWaaS, and SWG together into a new defense strategy. Fortinet offers all these key technologies and our cloud-delivered FortiSASE solution powered by the same operating system allows customers to extend consistent security to secure the remote workforce.
- Identity in everything. The industry is calling for stronger security leveraging identity-based safeguards. As a result, Zero-Trust solutions like ZTNA were also in the faces of attendees. ZTNA can be a great compliment to solutions like Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and we could tell that attendees felt this with the questions they asked of us along with Fortinet Security Fabric-related queries which also brings to memory a lot of Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture (CSMA) conversations and sessions. That’s why FortiClient and FortiEDR are often integrated for access decisions governed by security context.
- Cyber Security Mesh Architecture (CSMA) for security operations was popular. Due to the complexity of the traditional point product approach, a unified approach to XDR as an evolution of EDR is seen as the next big thing. At the same time, Threat Detection and Response (TDR) as a unified platform is also part of that picture. Solutions like SIEM will evolve and the idea of TDR could be something like SIEM, SOAR, UEBA, Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP), and Exposure Management combined together.
For over a decade, Fortinet has adhered to the vision that a broad, integrated, and automated cybersecurity mesh platform is essential to reducing complexity and increasing overall security effectiveness across expanding networks through the Fortinet Security Fabric. Our portfolio of more than 50 security and networking technologies—the largest in the industry—is designed from the ground up to interoperate—sharing threat intelligence, correlating data, and automatically responding to threats as a single, coordinated system. We also believe that a true cybersecurity mesh platform should further break down technology and vendor silos by enabling and supporting a broad open ecosystem of technology partners. To this point, we currently integrate and interoperate with over 500+ third-party technology partners as part of our Fortinet Security Fabric and continually work to expand on our partnerships.
All in all, IT security events are great for what is now on the market but the Gartner Security and Risk Summit gives us an expert view with a stronger eye on the future. If you are interested in learning more about the technologies mentioned above, check out the Fortinet Security Fabric and how you could benefit from it.
