From a software perspective, Sovereign SASE supports the same features that are provided as part of Fortinet’s security service edge (SSE) offering, FortiSASE. The difference with Sovereign SASE is how SASE is deployed, Shah said. With Sovereign SASE, customers or partners (including managed security service providers) host the hardware based on Fortinet’s predefined hardware bundles, which vary by scale requirements such as number of users and bandwidth.

FortiAI brings AI smarts to Unified SASE

These days nearly every vendor has to have some form of AI-enhanced service, and Fortinet is no exception. Fortinet introduced its FortiAI technology last December, and since then, it has been integrating the generative AI technology across its Fortinet Security Fabric

Past releases of FortiAI have been focused on accelerating threat investigation and remediation for SOC analysts, SecOps and network operations teams, so they can configure and manage their networks and more seamlessly investigate and remediate threats.

The latest integration as part of Unified SASE is with Fortinet Secure SD-WAN.

GenAI integration with Fortinet Secure SD-WAN assists with Day 0 through Day 2 operations, Shah said. That includes automating configuration of underlay secure SD-WAN tunnels between sites, setting up SD-WAN policies, troubleshooting issues such as why tunnels are down, or drilling down on IoT vulnerabilities. 

“Applying FortiAI across the Fortinet Security Fabric is all about simplifying things for resource-constrained IT teams and minimizing arduous or repetitive tasks,” Shah said.