The public health crisis we face continues to be both dynamic and, in many ways, unprecedented. We at Fortinet are focused on doing our part to protect the health of everyone in our extended organization, including employees, customers, partners, and suppliers. We are also committed to helping our customers and partners around the world maintain continuity and security in the midst of rapid changes and new risks.
A Message from Ken Xie
Fortinet plays an important role worldwide in helping to keep organizations moving forward, while also being focused on keeping their people safe. Because our products secure devices and transactions moving from the edge to the network core and to the cloud, our customers have been able to keep their workforces productive even as they transition to a remote workforce.
As a result, the work we do is extremely critical for both individuals and organizations around the world.
Here are a few examples of what we are doing to help during this important period:
We have taken – and will continue to take – proactive measures to minimize the spread of COVID-19. These measures include preventative sanitization at all Fortinet sites and social-distancing for those essential employees who must be on location to complete their duties. We have also implemented a remote worker policy according to local order guidelines for many locations around the world, aggressively restricted travel, and taken many other cautionary steps.
We have also committed to no COVID-19 related layoffs in the foreseeable future to assure employees that they are our top priority, and so our partners and customers can continue to rely on Fortinet to support and protect their organizations. We also understand many employees are balancing families and work, or perhaps family members that need extra care. Therefore, all leadership teams have been instructed to help make accommodations for any challenges that may arise.
Organizations around the world need our help right now, so in addition to providing for our Fortinet family, we want to do our part to help the communities in which we live. We have started by significantly increasing our donation matching program. These funds are earmarked to support non-profit organizations fighting the effects of the COVID-19 virus.
The need to support a remote workforce has never been greater than it is today. Existing Fortinet customers already have remote worker solutions embedded in their FortiGate firewalls that can be used at no additional charge. And Fortinet also offers a number of online training resources and remote access technologies free of charge.
Fortunately, FortiGate customers already have a powerful teleworker solution in place. Powered by custom security processors (SPUs), a FortiGate appliance is able to aggregate and terminate 4X more concurrent VPN connections and deliver 14X greater IPSec performance than any equivalent solution – with no additional hardware or licensing investments.
On the end user side, our free FortiClient software can be quickly installed on both business and personal devices to create encrypted VPN connections to the enterprise network. When this free endpoint software agent is combined with an existing FortiGate solution, organizations can rapidly roll out scalable IPSec and SSL VPN connectivity to their entire workforce.
Our Secure SD-WAN solution is built on a FortiGate platform, so customers can also provide remote access services for their branch workers into the organization’s internal and cloud resources with no additional hardware or licensing investments.
Fortinet cloud customers can add VPN aggregation to a FortiGate VM at no additional charge, enabling remote users to connect to the organization over an SSL connection from their browser. This ability not only provides secure access to cloud-based resources, but back-end IPSec connections from the cloud environment support role-based or IP-based access to on-premises resources for more granular access control.
Our online cybersecurity courses – NSE level 1 and NSE level 2 – are available to everyone free of charge. They provide a basic understanding of today’s threat landscape, essential cybersecurity concepts, and an introduction to critical security principles and technologies every remote worker should know.
Security and IT professionals can take advantage of Fortinet’s complete self-paced curriculum of cybersecurity training courses at no cost. The approximately 30 free courses cover everything from technical to advanced training on security-driven networking, adaptive cloud security, AI-driven security operations and zero-trust network access. Additional free courses are added as they become available in the self-paced library.
With cybercriminals increasingly targeting remote workers in order to gain control to corporate networks, it’s more important than ever to ensure your workers know how to recognize when they are being attacked. Educate your workforce about today’s cyber threats, such as phishing, social engineering, and ransomware attacks, and how to protect against them. This free awareness and training service is suitable for your entire workforce, from technical to non-technical employees and contractors.
This year’s Accelerate – our premiere events for partners and customers – is transitioning from an in-person conference to Accelerate: Digital Edition being held May 12 - 14. This digital event will be an ideal opportunity for customers and partners to get hands-on training and guidance from Fortinet and other industry leaders on how to thrive during times of rapid innovation and transformation.
As global circumstances are in flux and cyber threats continue to increase, work flexibility and business resiliency have become critically important. This is why ensuring the safety and well-being of Fortinet employees, partners, and customers around the world and maintaining business continuity remain our top priorities.
