Fortinet, a world leader in high-performance network security, announced it has formed an alliance with Equinix, Inc, joining the Equinix Cloud Exchange to provide enterprises and service providers the most mature, scalable and reliable security solutions across multiple cloud architectures. Fortinet’s industry-leading, high capacity firewall technologies deliver exceptional security functionality, throughput and ultra-low latency, enabling security, flexibility, scalability and manageability across customer datacenters, while leveraging the benefits of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV).
The Equinix Cloud Exchange is an advanced interconnection solution that enables seamless, on-demand and direct access to multiple clouds and networks inside Equinix IBX data centers. By bringing together cloud service providers with enterprises and enabling them to establish private, high-performance connections, the Equinix Cloud Exchange gives cloud users direct access to the services they need to build sophisticated hybrid cloud solutions.
“As more and more enterprise customers incorporate cloud deployments into their overall infrastructure, there is a fundamental effect on how network security is designed and deployed,” said Chris Sharp, vice president of cloud innovation at Equinix. “As businesses move more and more sensitive data to cloud infrastructures, the addition of Fortinet’s proven, carrier-class solutions to our Cloud Exchange will enable large global customers to deploy a robust virtualised security infrastructure without compromising performance.”
Fortinet’s Approach to Software Defined Networking
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an approach in which control is decoupled from hardware and given to a software application called a controller. SDN enables rapid changes in switching and routing policies independent of physical architecture, which can cause security policies to become easily outdated and lead to gaps in protection. Virtualised Fortinet appliances are well suited to SDN/NFV orchestration for enabling and protecting SDN environments. Fortinet products support the routing protocols and VPN technology necessary for administrators to implement new infrastructures while maintaining proper security policies. Virtualised FortiGate devices support dynamic routing protocols in both IPv4 and IPv6 (such as BGP and OSPF), allowing administrators to define new network routes as necessary. Built-in IPsec and SSL VPN technologies allow customers to protect new connections to data centers, as well as encrypt and secure communication between systems and end-users.
“Our FortiPrivate Cloud and FortiGate and cloud/SaaS management solutions offer the unique ability to integrate seamlessly into the Equinix Cloud Exchange. Combined, they offer a significant opportunity for customers to pick cloud services best suited for their respective applications, workloads and business needs,” said Matthew Pley, vice president, carriers and service providers, for Fortinet. “Security is top of mind for anyone moving to more efficient — yet more complex — cloud environments. We are excited to offer Equinix Cloud Exchange customers the peace of mind in knowing in that their critical assets are continually being protected, regardless of their cloud environments.”
