Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President of Product Strategy, Fortinet Inc
2024 ZKast #44 - John Maddison CMO of Fortinet from Accelerate 2024
In this #ZKast I interview CMO of @fortinet John Maddison from the company's recent user event, #Accelerate24
We discuss the news from the event, which includes the release of #FortiOS 7.6, which includes updates to many of its products.
We also talk #security platforms, consolidation and #AI
To learn more about Fortinet, please see:
https://www.fortinet.com/
#SDWAN #NGFW #ZTNA #SASE #cloud #AI #WIFI #networks #secure #artificialintelligence
About John Maddison
In an April 2024 interview at Fortinet's Accelerate 2024 event, John Maddison discussed the company's platform strategy and recent product updates, including the release of FortiOS 7.6. Maddison stated that Fortinet has "been doing platforms for a long, long time" and described the company's operating system as analogous to Apple's iOS, with devices and capabilities integrated on that OS and a fabric ecosystem connecting them. He noted that the security industry's current focus on platforms reflects the commoditization of features such as IPS, firewall, and antivirus, which can now be combined into secure web gateways. Maddison also outlined what he called a "third era" of network security, which he termed "unified SASE," extending beyond traditional SASE definitions to include the LAN, WAN, and cloud, requiring an OS that works across hardware, cloud, and home environments. Maddison addressed the role of artificial intelligence in Fortinet's products, stating that AI will help identify campaigns in the wild and that generative AI will enable customers to use products more effectively. He described the company's analyzer product as a "mini-SOC" that replicates a SOC analyst by aggregating client, endpoint, and management information. On data protection, Maddison said AI will assist in tagging unstructured data, which has historically been difficult, and that protection must extend to data loaded into large language models. He argued that vendors who have "cobbled together platforms through acquisition" face siloed data, whereas Fortinet's single operating system and consistent data set create a competitive advantage for AI.
Transcript (24 segments)
Z
Zach Caraval0:12
Joined today by John Maddison, CMO of Fortinet. John, how you been? It's been a while since I've seen you.
J
John Maddison0:17
Great, and welcome to our event. Yeah, this is a great event. I mean, the theme of this event is to step into the platform, and that's a concept I think that Fortinet at least has been articulating for quite some time. It seems like it's become a lot more commonplace in the security industry now. So from your perspective, start with just defining what that platform is.
Yeah, well, I think people say, 'Oh, platform is the hot word right now.' We've been doing platforms for a long time, a long, long time. As long as we've been a platform company. Yeah, and so I think, you know, based on our operating system, the word platform can mean many different things. I think each customer will have its own platform journey. There'll always be a need for point solutions because cybersecurity changes. Step further by moving it into what I call a sweet platform, which is endpoint and SOC into XDR, or SD-WAN and SSE into single-vendor SASE. And then we've still got some vendors who are saying, 'Oh wait a minute, I need a dual platform strategy,' so the dual sourcing strategy. So again, I think the platform journey will be customized for every customer. But I think you got to look under the covers to see what that platform is. Is it just some APIs? Is it a bunch of virtual machines? Is there just a badge stuck on there because you've acquired it? So look under the covers for that single operating system, that single console, that single analytics engine, that single client.
Z
Zach Caraval1:49
Yeah, it's interesting. In fact, a lot of the user sessions I was at here, the voice of the customer sessions, even though they were on topics such as... do it if you cobble together a bunch of you can't because you just can't merge them, so you always end up with five or six consoles. So for us, that's that swivel chair management, right?
J
John Maddison2:18
Yeah, it is. And you know, it's just bolted together and it never really works. And so for us, again, FortiOS, our operating system, is the key. And we keep adding functionality inside there, but also it means we still have a single console, a single analytics engine, and then also a single client. Those are important things.
Z
Zach Caraval2:35
Yeah, and since you mentioned FortiOS, the news from the show was the release of FortiOS 7.6, and I noticed that was packed with a bunch of new features and functions. Can you talk about what those were and what it means to your customers?
J
John Maddison2:48
Yeah, well, I think if you go even five years ago when we did a FortiOS operating release, it'd be some firewall features inside. Releases now, it's not just a very monolithic release inside of a hardware appliance; it's features across all those areas, because you know we truly believe that we're moving into this what we call this third era of network security, where there's many more edges. And not only do you have to protect against threats, but you have to protect the data differently. And so these releases now are much more than a single release in a single appliance.
Z
Zach Caraval3:34
Yeah, in fact, the way you and I were talking earlier about a good analogy to think about the value your platform brings is think of the Apple ecosystem, right? Where people never really argue whether their phone's best to breed or their tablets best to breed, it just because of that operating system everything works together. And it seems from the customers I've talked to here, indeed if they are... come together on that iPhone camera, etc. And then our fabric is like an ecosystem, like the watch, the phone, and other things, so you connect those things together.
J
John Maddison4:19
Yeah, yeah.
Z
Zach Caraval4:21
And since you talk about SASE, your CEO during his keynote put up a slide which I thought was pretty interesting. It looked at the waves of evolution for Fortinet, where you started off as a firewall vendor, then you moved into that next-gen firewall space and consolidated a bunch of functions into there. And then the way the slide read is with unified SASE, that looks like it's the next evolutionary step for Fortinet, where you're consolidating some other functions. So can you talk about that a little and explain what that means to your company?
J
John Maddison4:55
Yeah, I don't think it's just Fortinet. I think the whole industry started off with a firewall, but it soon became apparent with the applications becoming richer that you needed to look at the application, you need to look at the content. So this whole next-gen firewall came into place where you're looking at applications and content. And now we think the third era is coming where you're having to look at the data, but also the edges spread all over the place. And so now it's not just a hardware appliance; it's a as-a-service capability, it may be an agent capability, it may be cloud-native capability, it may be API protection. And then you have to look at more things, not just the application but look at the data as well and where it's going. So this third era, unified SASE as we call it, goes beyond SASE's definition of just SSE and SD-WAN into the LAN. You know, into the... not going to go away anytime soon.
Z
Zach Caraval6:10
This concept that you're talking about where data is everywhere, it literally is everywhere, yeah, from people's homes. And I've even talked to the cloud providers and the telcos, they're all coming out with their own edge platforms. And so customers want to adopt that to put more data in more places so they can do more analytics on it. And so indeed this environment we have where I think enterprises, I'm not going to say it was ever easy as an IT manager to do security, but at least you knew where your data was. And I think now you really have no idea, it's everywhere. And as I said, they've got all these edges now which are everywhere, so there's all these places it can escape. Yeah, so there's more data everywhere and there's more edges it can escape.
J
John Maddison6:51
Yeah, in fact, the concept of the edge is interesting. I was with one of my CIO customers the other night... complicated today it is. And that's why you need to be able to deploy in the cloud, from the cloud, in small packaging to protect maybe micro branches into campus environments. There's still a lot of data center perimeters, then there's the cloud, all the different clouds, and then there's edge computing as well. So yeah, you need to be able to deploy that enforcement point controlled by the policy long-term zero trust anywhere across the infrastructure.
Z
Zach Caraval7:36
Yeah, and I wanted to talk a little bit more about the LAN and the network as well. I noticed recently the Gartner Magic Quadrant came out for wired and wireless LAN, and Fortinet actually made their way into the leader quadrant this year. So congratulations on that. You're in the SD-WAN Magic Quadrant as well. So I think it's fair to say... got a platform that sits across SD-WAN and firewalling and SASE and access points, they go, 'Well, it must be kind of SMB or mediocre.' We're a leader in all those Magic Quadrants. Yeah, so it's enterprise class with the same operating system. I don't think anybody has been able to achieve that because usually it's different vendors in the Magic Quadrants, or if it's the same vendor they've acquired it. So to get the enterprise class and yeah, so getting to be a leader in three, a challenger in one in that secure networking area with the same operating system, same management console, is a pretty incredible achievement. So do I think you as a security-first company or a network-first company? We call it secure networking. The company was founded on the secure... view of what's going on with that connection, not just applications and data and posture.
J
John Maddison9:11
Okay, so you brought up the A word, AI. Yeah, and actually this is the first event it was a little refreshing to not be hit over the head with AI all day long every day. But I thought the demo that Fortinet provided in the keynote on AI was pretty interesting. In fact, the investors sitting behind me, they were all interested in that as well. So talk about the role of AI and security and how that changes the operational model.
Yeah, well, we see AI being across everything. And so we've worked on AI for a long time with our threat intelligence that's got a huge amount of data. And so AI eventually will allow us to identify campaigns in the wild, not quite there... at things that the SOC analyst would normally do when they go scrambling around trying to find things. And that's the power of our Fabric platform in that it has access to all those things. And so we can go and check different things: the client, the endpoint, the management system, and bring the information back. So we see that as really promising because every company I speak to hasn't got enough SOC analysts, they haven't got the expertise. And so if we can create that virtual SOC analyst, that'd be fantastic.
Z
Zach Caraval10:36
Yeah, in fact, the demo you showed though, it's pretty close to being that conversational SOC. People kind of think, 'Oh, we're going to have a perfect virtual SOC analyst that does everything.' Some nice baby steps will be great for most people. And that's why we're treating AI: let's give these incremental improvements to the product to help our... platforms through acquisition. You've got a bunch of silos of data, so trying to do AI across a bunch of silos doesn't work all that effectively. But you've spent the time and resources to have a single OS, single data set. Does that actually create a competitive difference?
J
John Maddison11:25
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think it's sometimes harder. Like when we first started into SD-WAN, clearly it's more work. People say, 'Oh, just buy something,' or it's easier to make it separate because you can go faster. You put it into your mainstream releases just slower because you have to make sure it's inside there and it's high quality and everything else. So it probably takes us a couple of years longer. SASE is the same example. Yeah, it would be easier just build a completely new SSE engine from something. No, we use our FortiOS operating system inside there. It's taken us a bit longer, but once we... about the other side of the AI coin. So clearly there's an advantage in being able to use AI to help the SOC analyst. But then as you've been talking about securing the data, and companies will be doing their own AI initiatives, what's your role you think in securing not AI for security, but security for AI? So you're helping secure the company's AI initiatives.
Yeah, and I think that comes to what I call the data leakage protection market that's been unconvincing, let's say, for the last... it's coming, it's coming hard. And I think AI will help to be able to tag data correctly, especially unstructured data which is very hard, and data that's moving. And once you can do that, then you can enforce the client or the network or the workload to provide that data protection. And just as... customers in the future.
Z
Zach Caraval13:10
All right, and so if we look ahead for the rest of the year from an AI perspective, can you give any kind of hint as to what customers might be able to expect?
J
John Maddison13:20
Well, we announced FortiAI for FortiAnalyzer. We previously announced GenAI for SIEM and SOAR. I think eventually it'll be across all our products. You'll start to see some new services which are our threat intelligence pieces. Then we've also got AI we're rolling out for AIOps across the network. So the networking space is just the same; it's just making sure you have uptime, high availability. That's the AIOps piece. And then you'll start to see us roll out more and more DLP functionalities for the large language model.
Z
Zach Caraval13:48
All right, John. Well, I really enjoyed my time here. We had some networking, we had updates to FortiOS, some AI being sprinkled in. I thought... there's obviously more networking people here where maybe in the past it would have just been security people.
J
John Maddison14:15
Yeah, well, I think you know, I think it's to us: secure networking, unified SASE, and AI-driven SecOps. Those are the big areas, the big marketplaces we're playing in all of them. And you know, from a technology perspective, we got to push really hard.
Z
Zach Caraval14:27
Yeah, all right. Well, thanks for the time. Thank you. So on behalf of John Maddison, I'm Zach Caraval from ZK Research, and thanks for watching. Reminder to hit the Subscribe button, and I'll see you next time on my next video.