Fortinet, a global company in broad, integrated, and automated cybersecurity solutions, announced new security operations centre (SOC) augmentation services designed to help strengthen an organization’s cyber resiliency and support short-staffed teams strained by the talent shortage. In addition, as part of Fortinet’s leadership efforts to help close the cyber skills gap, the Fortinet Training Institute has added initiatives across its programs to further increase access to its industry-recognized training and certifications.
John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet said “Fortinet builds ML-driven automation into all of its SOC offerings to support short-staffed teams affected by the cybersecurity skills shortage. But technology alone won’t solve this issue, which is why we are dedicated to also delivering human-based SOC augmentation services to provide immediate support while investing in an industry-leading training institute to close the cybersecurity skills gap. This combination of technology, services, and training enables SOC professionals to better protect their organizations from detection to incident recovery.”
The shortage of talented individuals is still a significant issue for security operations centre (SOC) teams worldwide. According to Fortinet’s 2022 Cybersecurity Skills Gap report, 50% of global leaders find it difficult to fill security operations positions, with 42% still searching for security operations analysts. Furthermore, the report shows that 80% of organizations around the world experienced one or more breaches due to a lack of cybersecurity skills and knowledge.
The enormous number of security alerts that SOC teams get each day, combined with a lack of staff and resources, frequently causes missed detections and delayed actions that raise exposure to cyber risk. SOC teams need a quick fix to these issues, which will involve investing in automated, integrated, and SOC and cybersecurity technologies as well as skilled personnel to better defend against threats.
Committed to helping organizations overcome these obstacles, Fortinet’s new and enhanced services help SOC teams reduce their organizations’ cyber risk while freeing up their time to focus on higher-priority projects. These updates include:
• SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS): Fortinet has expanded its SOCaaS offering, which blends FortiGuard cybersecurity experts with Fortinet advanced SOC technology by adding more artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to additional use cases. These updates enhance the offering’s ability to aggregate security alerts in one single cloud-based dashboard for customers to view actionable intelligence and accelerate resolution and further enable security operations teams to offload monitoring and detection to Fortinet security experts. With this approach, Fortinet speeds up alert triage, rapidly escalates security incidents and reduces false-positive alerts for customers.
• Outbreak Detection Service: Customers may now use a new outbreak detection service that notifies subscribers of significant breaking cybersecurity incidents with the potential for broad repercussions through email and automatically within key product user interfaces. These notifications contain crucial details concerning security incidents, such as the sequence of events leading up to an attack and the specific technologies that were impacted. The warnings also give firms tips on how to strengthen their security posture for future protection as well as custom threat hunting to run against logs and evaluate the possible impact of an attack.
• Incident Response and Readiness (IR&R) Services: Fortinet has updated its Incident Response offering by adding cybersecurity readiness services and focusing more on prevention. The new offering includes a range of proactive services, like risk assessments, the development of playbooks, and tabletop exercises, which will help organizations strengthen their cyber preparedness and reduce cyber risk. They will also have access to FortiGuard experts for fast containment and remediation in case of a cyberattack. Due to increased demand for these services worldwide, Fortinet is hiring more staff to support the Incident Response and Readiness Services and SOC automation capabilities, making the offering more accessible to enterprises.
While the new and improved SOC augmentation services give stressed teams instant relief, long-term investment in ongoing education and the development of cyber capabilities is equally important to stay up with the always-shifting threat landscape. The Fortinet Training Institute provides multi-level, award-winning training and certifications to security professionals looking to expand and upskill their knowledge in important cybersecurity areas as part of Fortinet’s ongoing commitment to closing the skills gap.
These programs also help untap new talent pools to help build the cyber workforce of the future, with a focus on providing training opportunities for women, veterans, students, and underserved populations. Some recent updates across programs include:
• Increasing Access to Advanced Technical Training: Fortinet has made the practical exam for NSE level 8 more accessible for IT and security professionals everywhere. Both the written and practical portions of the exam are now available in an online, proctored format, making the highest and most elite level of the Network Security Expert (NSE) Certification program more accessible to security professionals around the world.
• Supporting the Advancement of Women Professionals in Cybersecurity: The Fortinet and Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) bootcamp’s first female cohort has successfully finished the course, which provided 100 WiCyS members with free access to NSE level 4 training and labs from Fortinet as well as technical mentors, exam vouchers, and other benefits. Additionally, five programme participants have received scholarships from Fortinet to attend the annual WiCyS Conference on March 16–18, where they will meet cyber leaders and employers.
• Developing Cybersecurity Skills in Youth: To further develop the cyber workforce of the future, Fortinet is sponsoring various cybersecurity-based competitions for students in varying academic levels, ranging from middle school to college. This includes being a platinum sponsor of MITRE Engenuity’s Embedded Capture the Flag (eCTF) 12-week competition and a category sponsor for the Carnegie Mellon Capture the Flag competition.
Fortinet is taking steps towards fulfilling its goal of providing cybersecurity training to 1 million people by 2026 through various initiatives. The company’s upgraded SOC enhancement services are part of its extensive offerings supported by FortiGuard Labs. Today’s announcement reinforces Fortinet’s commitment to addressing the shortage of cybersecurity talent by offering organizations improved management of cyber threats through ML-powered automation, services, and more opportunities for training.
