How Fortis SSL Inspection Keeps You Safe from Encrypted Threats

Introduction

With the constantly changing threat perception on cybersecurity in general, businesses find themselves amid maintaining security of their digital assets and not lose out too much time trying to maintain compliance with being operational. A simple example is managing secure communication over the network which involves encrypted traffic. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and its successor TLS (Transport Layer Security) are protocols that encrypt internet communication often keeping privacy, secrecy. But the encryption is also used by bad actors to hide what they are up to. However, this is where SSL inspection comes in, and Fortinet firewalls are one of the best when it comes to decrypting encrypted traffic—they prove crucial during identification and mitigation of these threats.

SSL Inspection Being Important

SSL inspection is the method of decrypting, inspecting, and then re-encrypting traffic that flows through a firewall. What it does is secures privacy with encryption, however in building these walls you create doors and blind spots for threat actors to attack. The importance of SSL inspection:

• Unseen Encrypted Traffic: You cannot see the encrypted traffic if you do SSL inspection, meaning that some malicious activities might go undetected. SSL inspection is the critical visibility mechanism.
• Malware Detection: Encrypted channels are often used by cybercriminals to spread malware. It helps protect against these threats and lets you block them in real-time.
• Data Loss Prevention: SSL inspection can stop the sensitive data from being taken out of your network by decrypting it on the fly and validating what’s going out over encrypted traffic.
• Compliance: For data privacy and protection, regulatory rules such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act) or PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) have detailed requirements. SSL inspection enforces these compliance rules on the network traffic.

SSL Capabilities by Fortinet

An SSL inspection and download traffic scanning feature fall under the suite of tools designed to bolster security Fortinet has on offer. FortiGate firewalls, for instance, offer strong SSL inspection to protect encrypted threats. Fortinet SSL inspection also stands out in:

• High Performance: FortiGate firewalls are built with custom hardware that does SSL inspection at a high level of performance, resulting in minimal latency and greater throughput. This is essential to ensure a good user experience while still being secure enough.
• Deep Packet Inspection (DPI): FortiGate devices provide deep packet inspection, which means that it not only decodes the traffic but inspects the contents of this segment for signs of malware, intrusions, or policy violations.
• Flexible Deployment: Fortinet can be deployed for SSL inspection in multiple networking topologies which makes it flexible. This kind of flexibility is extremely relevant to businesses large and small.
• Support for Multiple Protocols: In addition to HTTPS, Fortinet’s SSL inspection provides in-depth coverage of other encrypted protocols such as SMTPS, POP3S, and FTPS.
• Automated Updates: Security services from Fortinet come embedded with automated threat intelligence updates that help the SSL inspection capabilities to auto-update with new and latest should-have-threat-definitions and attack strategies.

Implementation Tips

Enforcing SSL inspection in your Fortinet firewall deployment is an important step to achieve the best of security without performance hesitation. Here are a few helpful tips for approaching the implementation:

• Realize What You Have: Take an inventory of your entire ecology first before turning on SSL inspection, to see where sales and traffic really live.
• Policy Setup: Set up policies for SSL inspection according to security requirements and risk appetite. Rules can be specific down to granular logic, allowing certain types of traffic through and leaving others for inspection.
• Certificate Management: SSL/TLS certificates must be properly managed. Deploy the Fortinet certificate authority (CA) to all endpoints in the network trusting inspection devices.
• Monitoring: Monitor the performance effect of SSL inspection on your network at regular intervals. These tools allow possible bottlenecks in the performance of the latter to be identified as well from Fortinet firewalls.
• User Awareness: Notify users about the existence of SSL inspection to be transparent and in case concerned with their privacy.
• Keep it Updated: Make sure to keep your Fortinet firewall and SSL inspection capabilities always up-to-date with the latest firmware updates as well as security patches.

Conclusion

With encryption serving as both a help and a boon to cybercriminals, SSL inspection has become an integral part of complete security. The SSL inspection capabilities of FortiGate firewalls, particularly the robustness in setting these up by simply following some predefined best practices will give businesses a head start and much-needed tools to use against encrypted threats as well as visibility into the same for enforcing compliance with regulatory standards.

The major benefit of this is that you can use these advanced security features without making a significant initial investment, which mostly becomes unaffordable for businesses looking to deploy Fortinet firewalls in their environment. It is extremely valuable to be able to protect yourself from encrypted threats and still provide the performance of your network with a good user experience regardless if you are a small business or an enterprise-scale corporation. Leverage Fortinet’s SSL inspection prowess to protect your data in the age of a constantly changing threat ecosystem.