Fortinet enhanced and expanded its security management functionality to provide comprehensive reporting, vulnerability scanning and other features that let IT organizations obtain increased visibility into their networks and address governmental regulatory compliance requirements.

Fortinet announced FortiAnalyzer 3.0, a firmware release for the product formerly known as FortiLog, whose name change better reflects the product line's significant increase in functionality. Fortinet also announced two new appliances in the FortiAnalyzer family -- the 100A and 2000 models -- targeted at small/medium business (SMB) and large enterprise deployments, respectively. The FortiAnalyzer 3.0 firmware will run on the new appliance models as well as Fortinet's existing FortiLog-400 and -800 appliances.

FortiAnalyzer systems are purpose built appliances that provide valuable intelligence and simplify and centralize the collection and analysis of log and event data from Fortinet's FortiGate security appliances, delivering highly relevant network reports, valuable intelligence on network usage and assistance with meeting regulatory compliance.

• Vulnerability Scanner -- improves network security by scanning servers from a variety of platforms to determine potential weaknesses or attack points for hackers. Includes the ability for administrators to remotely access the Vulnerability Scanner.

• Network Analyzer -- captures all the packets flowing through the network switch, allowing administrators to view and search all traffic for increased security.  Includes the ability for administrators to remotely access the Network Analyzer.

• Enhanced Event Correlation -- improves security through event correlation reports that identify possible viruses or suspicious activity for Web, e-mail, FTP and instant messenger (IM) traffic logs received from FortiGate systems.

• Centralized Quarantining -- provides reliable storage through detailed traffic logging and infected file quarantining on FortiGate systems without hard drives.

• IM and Email Content Archiving -- examines and stores detailed reports of text in email and IM applications.

• Data Mining -- allows administrators to track network activity by user name and application, enabling them to create more detailed forensic analysis reports.

• Increased Reports -- Includes 75 new reports to encompass over 300 reports total.

"Regulatory obligations have forced many of our customers to face the time consuming and often frustrating task of trying to collect and make sense of vast amounts of security event data from multiple devices spread across their distributed networks," said Chris Ralph, senior information security consultant for Global Data Systems, a Fortinet Partner and global provider of advanced IT solutions. "Fortinet's FortiAnalyzer systems help ease this burden by delivering a centralized view of security activity across FortiGate security appliances -- helping to improve network security and maximize IT resources."

The new FortiAnalyzer appliances deliver scalable capacity, performance and enhanced 3.0 firmware features, providing administrators with a single source for gathering, correlating, analyzing and storing event data from dispersed FortiGate security appliances across their network security infrastructure.

The FortiAnalyzer-2000 system provides capacity and performance to meet the varied security analyzing, logging and reporting needs of medium to large enterprises. It includes four gigabit Ethernet ports and the highest amount of CPU performance and RAM of all FortiAnalyzer systems to deliver larger networks with a comprehensive view of network usage and security information. The FortiAnalyzer-2000 system has storage capacities of up to 2.4TB through options for up to six 120 or 400GB hot-swappable hard disk drives and supports logging for up to 700 FortiGate security appliances, depending on configuration.

The FortiAnalyzer-100A system is suited to meet the security analyzing, logging and reporting needs for small to mid-sized enterprises. It includes four 10/100 Ethernet ports, and supports logging for up to 100 FortiGate security appliances. The FortiAnalyzer-100A system has storage capacity of 120GB.

All FortiAnalyzer systems securely aggregate and analyze log data from multiple FortiGate integrated network security appliances to provide network administrators with a centralized graphical view of network usage and security information. A convenient, built-in report generator lets administrators quickly gain useful analysis on key events to support security response, network planning, acceptable use enforcement and compliance with governmental regulations regarding privacy and disclosure of security breaches. FortiAnalyzer systems accept and process a full range of log records provided by FortiGate security appliances -- including traffic, event, virus, attack, content filtering, and email filtering data. Additionally, they support configurable RAID-based storage, provide syslog support for third-party networking and security systems and include a vulnerability scanner that is platform independent.