Frank Dickson, research director at Frost & Sullivan is of the opinion that Fortinet’s FortiGate platform has achieved a leadership position in supporting MSSPs due to its strong overall performance in the market. "Fortinet has identified the unique needs of this channel and has precisely executed to address its needs. Frost & Sullivan is proud to bestow the Market Leadership Award to Fortinet and its FortiGate platform for a second time.”

Fortinet, the global leader in high-performance cyber security solutions, today announced that it has received the Market Leadership Award for the Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) Firewall Market from industry research firm Frost & Sullivan. The firm’s ongoing analysis of MSSPs reveals five key market forces driving the need for these services:

• The increasing complexity and focused targeting of attacks boosts demand for organizations to pursue a managed security service provide relationship.
• Evolving compliance requirements for organizations drive the need for managed security service providers in North America.
• The shortage of in-house and deep security expertise and talent drives demand for organizations to partner with a MSSP.
• The increasing complexity of network security point products is difficult to manage for businesses with small security teams.
• Intensifying focus on the core functions of the organization drives cloud service adoption and subscribing to MSSPs.

“The breadth of security services available on the FortiGate platform from intrusion prevention and Web filtering to advanced threat protection, arms us with comprehensive selling opportunities to meet the evolving requirements of our customers," Rich Tear, CEO, CSCI, Inc. "Fortinet is a trusted partner that works closely with us to ensure that we have the right technology, tools, and systems in place to deliver end-to-end security solutions to our customers.”

Fortinet’s FortiGate Leads MSSP Market

In the report by Frost & Sullivan, the firm notes that Fortinet has achieved a dominant position with MSSPs with its FortiGate line of high-performance enterprise firewalls. The firm recently ranked over 100 network security platforms, with the FortiGate line scoring the highest possible ranking among North American MSSPs.

The design of the management platform is one of the core reasons that the FortiGate product line experiences high adoption by MSSPs. All FortiGate firewall-based platforms run on the most widely deployed security operating system in the industry today, FortiOS and are optimized for internal segmentation, perimeter, data centre and cloud deployments. Additionally, the single pane-of-glass management reduces the investment training and support efforts for MSSPs and lowers the soft costs associated with managing multiple devices, enabling MSSPs to be more profitable. Free training is also provided for MSSP personnel to reduce the upfront cost burden to support Fortinet security tools.

The rich feature sets of Fortinet’s FortiGate product makes it well suited for the true needs of MSSPs. In addition to the stateful firewall functionality, the FortiGate platform provides other security services including intrusion prevention, antimalware, Web filtering, and advanced threat protection. Part of Fortinet’s principal strategy is to enhance the profitability of its MSSP partners through tools, such as monthly billing and return-on-investment models, helping to assure MSSPs’ ability to be profitable in leveraging Fortinet platforms in support of their managed security services customers.

“Managed Security Service Providers are increasingly becoming the cyber security vanguard for enterprises of all sizes, helping to identify and mitigate attacks before they happen. Fortinet is the security platform leader for MSSPs, helping them scale from Internet of Things to the cloud with a security fabric that provides unbeatable performance, ease of management, and unique expert support. This recognition by Frost & Sullivan further validates and supports Fortinet’s commitment to provide best-in-class enterprise cyber security solutions to MSSP channel partners,” Stephan Tallent, CISSP, senior director of Managed Security Service Providers at Fortinet.