Fortinet (FTNT Quick QuoteFTNT - Free Report) has announced the latest version of its FortiOS operating system, alongside significant enhancements to its cybersecurity platform, the Fortinet Security Fabric.

FortiOS 7.6 brings a myriad of enhancements aimed at empowering customers to mitigate risk, reduce complexity and enhance user experience across their entire network. These enhancements span various critical areas, including Secure SD-WAN, secure access service edge (SASE), zero-trust network access (ZTNA), automation, provisioning, remote browser isolation and digital experience monitoring. Moreover, FortiOS 7.6 offers flexible consumption options, such as SaaS or PaaS, ensuring adaptability to diverse enterprise environments.

Building upon its existing Generative AI capabilities, FortiOS 7.6 integrates FortiAI (formerly Fortinet Advisor) natively within the company’s central data lake, FortiAnalyzer, and its unified management console, FortiManager. This integration bolsters threat analysis and response capabilities while streamlining network and security operations. By expanding FortiAI across the Fortinet Security Fabric, organizations can make faster decisions, detect and remediate incidents swiftly, as well as seamlessly adopt necessary technologies.

FortiOS 7.6 introduces centralized data protection combined with enforcement points across the Fortinet Security Fabric, enabling enterprises to adopt and manage complete data loss prevention strategies. These enhancements ensure the security of sensitive information across hybrid networks.

Updates to Enhance the Fortinet Security Fabric

The company’s platform approach to cybersecurity, embodied in the Fortinet Security Fabric, converges networking and security through one operating system, unified agent, management console and data lake. Spanning more than 50 enterprise-grade products and services, the Fortinet Security Fabric offers extensive integrated coverage and interoperability with third-party vendors, empowering customers to build tailored cybersecurity solutions.

Additional updates include Fortinet Security Fabric’s unified agent, FortiClient, which now integrates full endpoint detection and response, enhancing ransomware protection, behavior-based detections and automated response capabilities and providing deeper visibility as well as control.

Moreover, FTNT is offering out-of-the-box SIEM and SOAR services through FortiAnalyzer, augmenting security operations and addressing the cyber skills shortage.

Tough Competition Creates Dull Prospects

Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have gained 16% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s growth of 12.2%. Fortinet faces tough competition from Cisco Systems (CSCO Quick QuoteCSCO - Free Report) , Palo Alto Networks (PANW Quick QuotePANW - Free Report) and Check Point Software Technologies (CHKP Quick QuoteCHKP - Free Report) . You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Cisco Secure stands out with its extensive security product portfolio, offering unparalleled effectiveness in protecting data. With Cisco Secure, businesses can establish security resilience, defending against unforeseen threats or changes in the threat landscape. Through the solution, organizations can uphold the integrity of their financial and data assets, recover from operational disruptions, enhance supply chain resilience and ensure the security of a dispersed workforce.

Palo Alto Networks’ Security solutions are renowned for the ability to protect a wide range of IT infrastructure components, including network, endpoint, data center, private and public cloud, and SaaS applications. PANW offers a holistic approach to cybersecurity, providing organizations with integrated solutions to address the evolving threat landscape. By safeguarding critical assets across various environments, Palo Alto Networks enables businesses to mitigate risks effectively and maintain operational continuity.

Checkpoint's Network Security solutions have gained popularity among organizations seeking to fortify their security infrastructure. Its solutions are designed to streamline security measures without compromising network performance, offering a unified approach that enhances operational efficiency. By consolidating security functions into a single platform, CHKP enables organizations to simplify management and reduce complexity in their security operations.

Fortinet’s commitment to integrating its portfolio under one operating system, coupled with investments in custom ASICs, yields benefits across firewall functionality, segmentation, ZTNA, OT/IoT/Edge security and unified SASE. This unified approach is expected to ensure consistent protection and management across diverse environments, thereby driving top-line growth in the near term. We expect FTNT’s 2024 revenues to rise 8.1% year over year to $5.73 billion.