Fortinet's 'fabric' aims to shore up cybersecurity

Chanvith Iddhivadhana, Fortinet's country manager in Thailand. Fortinet is one of the many cybersecurity firms working alongside competitors on key clients.

Cybersecurity provider Fortinet is striving to take a larger share of Thai banks' and telecoms' cybersecurity budgets through a comprehensive "fabric" solution that replaces a patchwork of different vendors' options.

Corporate cybersecurity structures have traditionally grown by adding solutions for every new part of the business that comes online or for every new threat encountered, resulting in what networking gear giant Cisco calls a "Frankenstructure" -- a patchwork of tens if not hundreds of vendors.

Large companies like Fortinet now work alongside their competitors on key clients.

"Even if we can provide solutions for most of a customer's needs, they often prefer to have a mixture of different brands," said Chanvith Iddhivadhana, Fortinet's Thailand country manager.

A revolution is under way, however, as clients seek to consolidate their cybersecurity vendors. Having fewer vendors lets companies have a broad view of all nodes in the cybersecurity web, including cloud, endpoints (including Internet of Things devices), cybersecurity responses and virtualisation.

Before 2015, large cybersecurity providers like Fortinet and Cisco lost market share to small niche players. But that trend has been reversing for the last three years. As firms move away from specialised and towards comprehensive solutions over the next few years, the five largest security vendors will increase their share to 40% of the market, translating to an average growth rate of 20-30%, according to Morgan Stanley.

Fortinet, previously focused on firewall solutions, is now pushing for an integrated "big-picture fabric solution", Mr Chanvith said. This solution replaces the patchwork of 30-100 solutions used by most large companies today.

In Thailand, Fortinet is pushing for adoption of its security fabric among major clients, which include the country's top three telecom operators and top five banks. The solution would boost the company's share of these clients' security budgets but would not cut out competitors entirely, since the door would remain open for other players to implement their solutions within the fabric.

Banks and telecoms, large organisations with growing cybersecurity frameworks that have been built piece by piece for more than a decade, are some of the main targets for vendor consolidation. "We set a dedicated sales team for banking in the last quarter of 2017, something we have never done before," Mr Chanvith said.

Massive consolidation may not happen as quickly as large companies would prefer. Banks and other large enterprises, which previously relied on 30-plus providers, may be unwilling to rely on a single or a couple of vendors, at least in the short term. Moreover, some security issues may be unique and need a specialised player.

In fact, Fortinet is bringing along (or at least opening the door to) 42 of its competitors, including some of the largest, with the Fabric-Ready Partner programme, including IBM Security, McAfee, Micro Focus and NEC Corporation.

At least at first, Fortinet will seek to "simplify multi-vendor security deployments" and use its framework to deeply integrate competitors solutions' with the Fortinet security fabric.

"With the cybercrime landscape becoming increasingly complex, collaboration between cybersecurity leaders is more important than ever," said Rich Telljohann, IBM Security's director of business and corporate development. "The creation of open API ecosystems like Fortinet's Fabric-Ready Partner programme makes it easier for cybersecurity teams to create a more seamless line of cybersecurity defence."

In some ways, the arcane and intricate web of vendors that Fortinet is seeking has grown haphazardly, while in others it's been driven by design. There are more than 1,600 cybersecurity players around the world, most of which specialise in very specific solutions for very specific problems, sometimes for a handful of companies.

These vendors, each the best of its class in a specific area, coalesce into an umbrella that protects companies from most attacks. Without an overarching structure supporting them, however, leaks are inevitable.

A non-integrated network can make it hard to share information among segments of a company's cybersecurity strategy, since the systems don't always mesh with one another and are controlled by different companies.

"Talking about the banking industry, its important to have visibility over the whole network of endpoints and be able to react rapidly," said Eric Chan, Fortinet's director of consulting for Asia-Pacific. Endpoints like ATMs are generally the weakest points in a bank's cybersecurity network, he said, yet they are often neglected in favour of central systems.

As well as inefficient, a non-consolidated system can also be expensive. Companies spend an average of 8-10% of their IT budget on cybersecurity, Mr Chan said.

According to Morgan Stanley, cybersecurity spending will increase by 18% a year through 2020. In Thailand, cybersecurity spending is projected to rise by 15% from 2018 to 2019, based on data provided by consulting firm Frost and Sullivan.

More money spent on cybersecurity does not equal more protection. Companies spend more on cybersecurity than ever, yet cybercrime is on the rise, Morgan Stanley said.

According to Gartner, "A single-vendor approach more effectively detects and stops advanced threats, increasing the efficiency of resources and reducing configuration and management problems while requiring less training and problem-solving costs."