Fortinet echo system - your opinions

[mdrabble]

Morning all

 

Currently using Smoothwall for filtering - Have no issues with Smoothwall - but licence up for renewal in June, so looking at alternatices.

 

We used Unifi for Access Points and a mixture of 95% Unifi EdgeMax switches and about 5% FS Switches.

 

Looking to try and being eveything under one umberella for ease of managment in terms of one interface, one system

 

So with this in mind, I was thinking Fortinet - does all this and (as far as I know is KCSIE, Dfe, etc compliant)

 

So, before I go down this rabit hole and spend time looking into this.......

 

Anyone else use Fortinet for Firewall/Filters, AccessPoints and Switches?

 

Should I look to keep things seperate?

 

Welcome all thoughts and opinions on this.

 

Cheers

[lmrogers]

Morning

 

I have actually just gone down that route this summer. I replaced an Smoothwall (which I had many issues with) for a FortiGate 200F (well 2 in HA). I also replaced all onsite switching with the FortiSwitches and they are now all managed by the FortiGate and honestly the ease of management on them is incredible! They were super easy to install and having that single pane of glass management is wonderful! I am yet to replace my Unifi APs but have tested and know of other sites manging their FortiAPs with the Gates and once I have the budget will be rolling out the FortiAPs.

 

One thing I would point out though is for Safeguarding reporting, it is worth getting FastVue Reporter as well as the default reporting is not the greatest, but I think that is the same for most firewalls to be honest.

 

Happy to have a more detailed chat if you want and can hook you up my with Forti partner as well if you wanted more info from them.

[RLR]

We just upgraded our Fortigate to a newer model (400F). We've been with them for years and seems to work really well. We have key word searches setup for reporting. These go to the various DSLs for each of our sites. We have FortiAnalyzer which looks to be similar to FastVue (although FastVue seems to do more so might look into this!). We have a support contract for our Firewall in case we need extra help.

 

We currently use Aruba Access Points and Aruba Switches so can't comment on the FortiAPs.

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hello,

 

as you know we're a massive fan of FortiGates having partnered with them for circa a decade.

 

As standard FortiGates don't come with much reporting. You need to buy one of the different variants of FortiAnalyzer which is cloud based, VM based for physical appliance. I'd recommend the VM based one although they're a touch pricey.

 

You can use FastVue as an addition which i think is currently VM based although I've heard rumours they're also offering a cloud based service.

 

Finally we've also developed our own Incident Manager Platform which can sit on top of Netsweeper or FortiGate (more firewalls to come later) and provide real time alerting and reporting for safeguarding incidents. It's currently FOC for customers using our connectivity but can be purchased as an annual cloud based subscription for schools using other connectivity and onsite FortiGates. See https://www.schoolsbroadband.co.uk/our-services/safeguarding-filtering-and-security/safeguarding-management/

 

It can even integrate with Teams too for immediate safeguarding alerts which has had some pretty good feedback from customers.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[TronXP]

Morning

 

I have actually just gone down that route this summer. I replaced an Smoothwall (which I had many issues with) for a FortiGate 200F (well 2 in HA). I also replaced all onsite switching with the FortiSwitches and they are now all managed by the FortiGate and honestly the ease of management on them is incredible! They were super easy to install and having that single pane of glass management is wonderful! I am yet to replace my Unifi APs but have tested and know of other sites manging their FortiAPs with the Gates and once I have the budget will be rolling out the FortiAPs.

 

One thing I would point out though is for Safeguarding reporting, it is worth getting FastVue Reporter as well as the default reporting is not the greatest, but I think that is the same for most firewalls to be honest.

 

Happy to have a more detailed chat if you want and can hook you up my with Forti partner as well if you wanted more info from them.

 

I have been fortigate for firewalls for at least 8 years, and we are slowly moving over the switches and APs also, it is expensive but the ability to see and manage everything in one place just makes life easier!

[lmrogers]

I have been fortigate for firewalls for at least 8 years, and we are slowly moving over the switches and APs also, it is expensive but the ability to see and manage everything in one place just makes life easier!

 

I found the pricing cheaper or in the same ball park as some alternatives such as Cisco on the switching and they were definitely much cheaper than the current HP/Aruba pricing. Some companies refused to quote though as they didn't get the deal reg on the project. 100% the way to go moving forward.

[mdrabble]

Does Fortinet support off site filtering?

[SchoolsBroadband]

Yes. The default solution is using Forticlient endpoint protection which puts web filtering essentially on the endpoint. You can also support it by doing a remote dialing Vpn and applying filtering policies to that.

 

Dave

[RLR]

Does Fortinet support off site filtering?

 

We do this with our student iPads. We push out a PAC file that forces their connection to authenticate with our firewall to give them filtering offsite.