Fortinet PartnerSync '19

Fortinet partners, resellers, and distributors from all over Asia Pacific were invited to Indonesia to learn insights, share knowledge (and have a great time doing so) at the Fortinet PartnerSync 2019 event. Escaping the rain and cold weather of Melbourne, I ascended upon Bali to the Westin Resort, located in blissful Nusa Dua.

We kicked off the informative event with a quote from Professor Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of World Economic Forum, that Cybersecurity is the guardian of the 4th Industrial Revolution. “The 4th Industrial Revolution is characterised by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. In a hyper-connected world, cyber resilience is both a potential risk and an enabler.” The threats that we face from hackers, viruses, malware, and data breaches are not going away—they’re evolving, and unfortunately there’s far more to come.

As it’s hard to sum up three days of presentations I’d like to share some of my key takeaways from PartnerSync:

Simon Piff (IDC, Vice President, Blockchain and Security Research) provided an insights into the Cybersecurity market.

The market is moving from protection to detection. Whilst endpoint security makes up over 50%, the biggest growth area is security analytics and intelligence.

There is demand from organisations to move on and move off cloud, so “on prem” will not disappear. As consultants, we need to understand the type of cloud currently being used and align the correct offering/solution.

Australia was the first market to adopt cloud and are still a leader when it comes to cloud. Whilst “on prem” is required by some organisation due to a multitude of reasons, hybrid multi-cloud is the only economical architecture of the future.

End user capability is on the decline and organisations are finding it difficult to hire and retain good skilled resources. This indicates a need for more value-added services and partial or temporary outsourcing, which is becoming the norm.

Not Dev Sec Opps, but Sec Dev Opps. Security should always come first.

To stay competitive, organisations are connecting OT environments to their IT networks. When OT was implemented, security wasn't a thought. Nowadays the great divide between IT and OT seems to grow. Use cases are not championed, and the business is unaware of the benefits of IT/OT convergence. IT/OT use cases exist at the local level and business cases should be created to demonstrate benefit. Whilst this is no easy feat, IT/OT principles should be characterised and accepted across technology and business functions. Fortinet provides a holistic security platform to fend off breaches with intelligent and effective network security.

The security market is driven by legislation in most countries. If there is no law, the value to the business is “hard to see”. Australia is being pushed towards compliance with NDB, VPDSF and ACSC Essential 8. A shift towards Digital Trust is emerging in developed markets, building trust with partners, staff and most importantly customers.

SD-WAN is a hot topic at the moment, and this is ever so with the SD-WAN market forecast to be US$1.9B by end of 2019. Organisations making the move towards SD-WAN want to low-cost access method, driving cost out of the business. Organisations want to take back control and get better visibility of their network. CIOs are trying to get better performance, strengthen security posture and reduce network redundancy. Fortinet is leading innovation in the SD-WAN space with their Secure SD-WAN and SD-Branch.

Defining the “business value” of IT security is an ongoing challenge. IT security ROI is notoriously difficult to identify (until after an attack!)

One of the key takeaways from the Q&A with Julia Walsh (Vocus Communications, General Manager Enterprise & Business) that resided well with me and how The Missing Link operates was that discussions should be business outcome focused, rather than solution focused. If it's solution focused, you’re potentially just purchasing a widget, however business outcome focused discussions will ensure the solution will meet your requirements and help you achieve your future plans.

A huge thanks to the team at Fortinet for an amazing few days in Bali. Get amongst the Fortiverse!

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