Fortinet Secures NEC Cloud Platform

Fortinet, the high-performance network security solutions provider, has announced its FortiGate network security platform has been selected by NEC as the next generation firewall for its MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation cloud platform software. The NEC software, announced in May, supports automatic configuration, deployment and operation of cloud (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) environments within enterprise and service provider datacentres. While the platform is initially geared for the Japanese market, NEC plans to expand sales to additional markets, including North America, Europe and Asia.

The MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation software is the first cloud platform software to utilise software-defined networking (SDN), which automates cloud operations through OpenFlow, the communications protocol that gives access to the forwarding plane of a network switch or router over the network. The software is linked to the company’s Programmable Flow Controller PF6800 and enables centralised control of virtual servers and virtual networks. NEC’s cloud platform makes it possible to automate operations for changing network settings arising from virtual server retrieval requests from users, a process that has up until now been time consuming for server administrators.

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Fortinet’s FortiGate network security platform is the first third-party next-generation firewall to be certified by NEC to protect its cloud platform. Since 2010, NEC and Fortinet have worked together to deploy the FortiGate platform as the security resource in the SDN environments NEC has built. Today, the integration of FortiGate in MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation represents another step in enhancing the security of SDN environments in the cloud.

“We are pleased to be extending our relationship with Fortinet to our new secured cloud platform. The customer feedback to date has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Akinori Itou, general manager, System Software Division, NEC. “By combining our strength in cloud platform development with Fortinet’s strength in network security innovation, we believe we are perfectly positioned to offer our customers a secure software defined cloud platform that offers high levels of reliability, usability and simplified operability.”

“Software-defined networking is more than a buzzword. It’s a reality. But the question on minds today is how to secure them,” said Norio Kubota, country manager for Fortinet Japan. “We believe we’ve found an answer with our collaboration with NEC. With their MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation software, we are able to automatically route all of a customer’s internal and perimeter traffic through our next-generation firewalls, which greatly improves the customer’s security posture while reducing provisioning time and costs for operators.”

To protect the company’s MasterScope Virtual DataCenter Automation cloud platform software, NEC’s specifically chose Fortinet’s FortiGate-3000 series and FortiGate-1000 series next generation firewalls (NGFW). These network security appliances provide exceptional throughput, ultra low latency and a wide range of configuration options for next generation environments that have requirements for lightning fast transactions, such as financial services, Voice over IP (VoIP), BYOD/Mobile and Web 2.0 applications.

The FortiGate product family combines firewall, application control, IP Sec and SSL VPN, intrusion prevention, on-device and cloud-based sandboxing, antimalware and Web filtering into a single device with all features turned on for a single price. All FortiGate devices provide native dual-stack support for IPv6 traffic out of the box as Fortinet has been a leader in protecting IPv6 networks since 2007, achieving both IPv6-Ready and JITC certifications in 2008.