Fortinet’s Bob Fortna Talks Challenges in Securing Agencies’ IT Infrastructure

Bob Fortna, president of Fortinet’s federal business, has said that agencies need to implement automated operations and new approaches to network protection to keep up with a constantly evolving threat landscape.

Fortna said in an interview with Fedscoop aired Monday that organizations need to facilitate “tremendous renovations” on their data networks, deploy segmentation techniques and leverage advanced threat protection technologies that utilize vast amounts of data to rapidly spot vulnerabilities.

He also said that agencies need to address issues such as the prevalence of ill-equipped legacy systems, inadequately trained personnel and lack of funding to achieve information technology modernization goals.

According to Fortna, agencies can use automated technologies to take-over mundane and repetitive tasks related to cybersecurity and adopt a team-based mindset to better secure their networks against evolving cyber threats.

“As we modernize, we have to make sure that cyber is in the conversation⁠—that it’s not an afterthought,” he said. “If we take all of the good hygiene principles and the new tools that we have, then we should be able to modernize and still protect our networks adequately.”