The Future of Firewall Technology and the Role of Behavioral Analytics

Introduction

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) is a significant challenge for today’s cybersecurity professional due to the rapid changes in the digital world. To help stymie these advanced threats, cybersecurity tools are increasingly employing behavioral analytics as a critical piece of the solution. For years, Fortinet has remained on the cutting edge of new cybersecurity innovation and it is quite rightly taking the lead in integrating behavioral analytics into its flagship firewall technology. The deployment of Fortinet hardware aims to increase detection capabilities and protection against APTs. It also improves security frameworks and comes with tremendous benefits for businesses who are renting firewalls or other networking equipment.

Behavioral Analytics — Introduction

It allows us to obtain data related to the activities and interactions of users, entities or systems within a network. Traditional signature-based methods used to identify previously known threats based on patterns or signatures; so, the new approach which is behavior analytics you can have a unique profile for each user/system behaviors. The profile identifies patterns that can be used to detect anomalies in behavior that may indicate a security threat. Behavioral analytics can be powered by machine learning algorithms, meaning it gets better and sharper over time using new data for more accuracy. It is able to pick up more subtle signals of intrusions, even when the threat patterns are not previously identified. And this is where it becomes vital in detecting and restraining the APTs that usually outmaneuver standard security controls.

Fortinet’s Implementation

Fortinet spearheads efforts to incorporate behavioral analytics into the firewall. It has been incorporated to better threat detection and generally security posture for its users. This is how Fortinet has introduced behavioral analytics in their firewall systems:

• Machine Learning Integration: Fortinet has built in next gen machine learning models into their firewalls. These models examine traffic and event patterns in an ongoing manner, establishing a normal baseline of activity. All outliers from this baseline are immediately marked for review.
• Real-Time Analysis: Integrating real-time behavioral analytics into Fortinet’s firewalls allows the firewalls to detect threats as they emerge. This rapid analysis enables fast response to the inevitable security anomalies when compared to methods that maybe detect threats after they have completed their purge.
• User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA): This approach is unique to Fortinet, as it incorporates UEBA technology directly into its security appliances for monitoring user and entity behavior on the network. UEBA monitors the activities of internal users and devices, identifying the behaviors that can suggest a system compromise or insider threat.
• Comprehensive Threat Intelligence: When lined up with the comprehensive threat intelligence provided by Fortinet, behavioral analytics give way to another dimension security. When combined, these two improvements result in improved detection of zero-day exploits and complex attack vectors.

Benefits for Security Teams

Integration with Fortinet’s firewall technology: A key advantage to the new launch is that it bakes behavioral analytics into existing firewall tech — which is good news for security teams, especially in large orgs struggling with limited skilled resources (businesses also often rent their firewalls)

• Enhanced Threat Detection: Detect previously unknown threats using anomaly behavior analysis and effectively respond to potential threats that could have gone unnoticed.
• Fewer False Positives: By identifying what behavior is high risk, we can effectively separate the real threats from the pack and significantly reduce the number of false positives. The result of that is it provides security teams with the ability to address actual security incidents instead of chasing false positives.
• Accelerate Incident Response: Real-time analysis and alerting ensure security teams are better able to respond quickly to security incidents, reduce damage and limit the damage from a breach.
• Cost Efficiency: The integration of behavioral analytic can save lots of cost for businesses who renting firewalls and other network equipment. Given that businesses inevitably incur costs when dealing with security intrusions, they can save resources on such loss by securing their infrastructure using a such analytics and machine learning based strategy.
• Greater Insider Threat Management: Behavioral analytics enhances the protection against insider threats by taking snapshots of user behavior and looking out for any abnormality that could signify ill-intent
• Remote Working: For businesses, scalability and flexibility are both an essential part of Fortinet Firewall Solutions. By using behavioral analytics, these solutions can scale with the enterprise and accommodate increases in both network size and complexity while also delivering on security over time.

Conclusion

How cyber threats have evolved well beyond the capabilities of traditional security measures Fortinet’s integration of behavioral analytics for its firewall technology is a proactive answer to this, providing corporations with an agile method to compare and remedy security threats. This allows Fortinet firewalls to detect or alert when suspicious behaviors occur that might not otherwise be picked from by using known threat signatures only. Specifically, the most significant beneficiaries of this state-of-the-art technology are companies that lease firewalls, servers and routers. They are not only shielded from a larger portion of attacks, but they also have lower false positives and quicker time to respond to incidents. So in short, it would be assertive to say that Fortinet’s inventive use of behavioral analytics with their firewall technology points toward the improved prospect from where emit security mechanisms will not obligate a toll on the performance, adaptability and ahead all else cost efficiencies. It ensure the security of the business and allow them to prosper in an every changing threat landscape in a digital world.