Fortinet enhances FortiWeb Web application firewall family to help customers safeguard confidential and regulated data

Fortinet, the network security provider and supplier of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, has announced a major firmware release for its FortiWeb web application firewall family. FortiWeb appliances provide enterprises, application service providers, Security-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) customers with significantly expanded security capabilities designed to harden and simplify protection of critical web-based applications containing regulated and confidential data.  FortiWeb 4.0 MR2 firmware features a broad range of substantial enhancements that include expanded attack protection schemes to help organizations more easily achieve and maintain compliance with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS 6.6) and help prevent identity theft, financial fraud and corporate espionage associated with strategic web applications.  

The FortiWeb family of integrated web application and XML firewall appliances deliver this specialized, layered application threat protection.  These appliances are unique in consolidating web application firewall, XML filtering, web traffic acceleration and application traffic balancing into a single device.  Equipped with FortiWeb 4.0 MR2 firmware, FortiWeb appliances leverage advanced techniques to provide bi-directional protection against sophisticated threats like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.  A new Web Vulnerability Scanner is also provided as another layer of visibility to help detect existing vulnerabilities targeting specific web applications.  This capability is critical to help achieve and maintain compliance with the most current PCI DSS 6.5 and 6.6 specifications designed to secure web applications that process, store or transmit payment card data.  These specifications require web application firewalls and vulnerability assessment capabilities, both of which are provided by Fortinet in a single device.

"New vulnerabilities are persistent, and when you add in the complexity of ongoing patching challenges and code revisions, we experienced that layered application threat protection from the FortiWeb device could pro-actively and effectively act to shielding web-based applications and network centric-facing information from attack and data loss," said Captain Engineer Antonio Ianniello, head of Applications Development and Experimentation Section at Aeronautica Militare.

With the new FortiWeb 4.0 MR2 firmware, FortiWeb appliances now have additional security and usability capabilities that include:
Robust protection against remote file inclusion attacks

 File upload restrictions that now control which file types (jpg, exe, zip, etc) can be uploaded to web applications
 
Data loss prevention enhancements that enable customers to mask credit card numbers in server replies to prevent sensitive data leakage
 
Authentication of users via Radius servers
 
Scheduled and automatic FTP backups
 
A new import/export tool for specific security policies and the ability to automatically clone those policies

"Web applications are an essential foundation for conducting business today which is why organizations now place a premium on protecting highly sensitive and regulated Web application data," said Michael Xie, founder, CTO and vice president of engineering at Fortinet.  "The consequences of compromised web application data can be devastating.  Identity theft, corporate espionage, financial fraud, negative impact on brand equity and the potential for a backlash in customer loyalty are just a few examples. That's why we are relentless in bringing innovative web application security measures to market.  This latest release of our FortiWeb firmware is yet another example of our commitment to help secure our customers' web application infrastructures."