Co-author: Chad Whalen – VP Cloud Security, Fortinet

Fortinet and Microsoft today announced an extension of their partnership to protect the cloud environments of their joint government customers. The US Federal Government sets the world’s highest security standards for data protection. Other public institutions, like state and local governments, police, and fire departments, follow these standards as well to protect the citizenry they serve.

Partnering to Deliver Cloud Security for Government Organizations

Fortinet and Microsoft are committed to delivering world-class security to Azure cloud workloads. With the expansion of our partnership in the upcoming release of Azure’s Government Cloud, based on the Azure Resource Manager architecture, we are now able to further protect mission-critical government workloads.

A Security Fabric for the Azure Government Cloud

Fortinet’s Security Fabric solutions for the cloud have been released on the Azure Government Cloud platform to provide comprehensive security, threat intelligence, and the visibility to detect, isolate, and respond to threats in real time for workloads running in the Government Cloud. Virtual security products, such as Fortinet’s industry leading enterprise firewall (FortiGate), web application firewall (FortiWeb), mail security (FortiMail), as well as its integrated security management (FortiManager) and analytics (FortiAnalyzer) solutions are now available. Fortinet is also a go-to-market partner with Microsoft’s Azure Security Center.

FortiGate advanced firewalls and policies enable security for workloads in all categories of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) data. Additionally, Fortinet’s FortiOS 5.x, available in all FortiGate virtualized instances, has been certificated by the DoD Unified Capabilities (UC) Approved Products List (APL).  Fortinet’s inclusion on the UC APL indicates that its solutions are officially sanctioned for DoD use, and also provides reassurance to our joint customers that Fortinet has been successfully field-tested against one of the world’s most rigorous security protocols.

Fortinet virtual security capabilities will be available to Microsoft’s public sector cloud customers with the upcoming release of the Azure Government Cloud. Fortinet has a deep resource pool serving the ARM cloud environment including:

• Innovative High-Availability Solutions
• Solution Templates Available for Use
  • https://github.com/fortinetclouddev
• Quick Start Guides Reference Architectures, White Papers, & Use Cases

Delivering today and into the Future

Fortinet has long held a leadership position within the public sector security market, and has worked closely with the US Federal Government to define and deliver leading security requirements to serve its departments and organizations. Additionally, Fortinet works closely with the US security community to identify and deter threats as they are identified, thereby providing Microsoft with the latest threat intelligence necessary to meet the complex and critical security requirements of the government.

Microsoft and Fortinet are committed to delivering the most comprehensive cloud security solutions for the government sector to ensure that its incredibly valuable and sensitive data remains secure across all virtual, physical, and geographical lines.