Fortinet Security Operations Solutions Use AI to Slash Time to Detect and Respond to Incidents from Three Weeks to One Hour

Fortinet®, the global cybersecurity leader driving the convergence of networking and security,  announced the results of an independent analysis by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) to quantify the customer benefits of deploying security operations solutions from Fortinet. The analysis determined that customers dramatically improved detection, containment, investigation, and response while making security teams up to 86% more operationally efficient. Organisations reduced cyber risk, improved productivity, and enabled existing teams to do more in less time. And all of these improvements come with an investment payback period of as little as one month.

The Quantified Benefits of the Fortinet SecOps Fabric
The foundation of the ESG analysis was in-depth interviews with end-users, during which they established the time it took each organisation to handle critical security operations functions, such as the time to detect, validate, and contain incidents as well as the time to fully investigate and remediate them. Together with technical documentation, existing case studies, third-party analyses, and industry data, ESG was then able to establish qualitative and quantitative benchmarks around these functions, especially potential risk, time, and cost savings the average organisation should expect.

According to the ESG analysis, organisations that implemented Fortinet Security Operations solutions realised significant savings and benefits in three areas:

Early detection and prevention (EDP): The time to identify threats was reduced from 168 hours (21 business days), if detected at all, to less than an hour and often only seconds using Fortinet EDP technologies, which include FortiEDR, FortiDeceptor, FortiRecon, FortiSandbox, and FortiNDR that use artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced behavioral analytics. The time to triage these threats was reduced from eight hours to 10 minutes, and the time to contain them dropped from 4.2 hours to one minute based on Fortinet’s integrated approach.

Central analytics and response automation (CARA): The time to investigate threats dropped from 6 hours to 1 minute (or less) using the insight and automation of Fortinet CARA components, which include FortiAnalyzer, FortiSIEM, FortiXDR, FortiSOAR, and managed detection and response services. More importantly, the time to remediate those threats was reduced from 12.5 hours to 5-10 minutes in most cases.

Training and preparation: End-user and analyst training from Fortinet reduced risks from phishing attacks and improved incident readiness and response, which resulted in fewer security team hours spent responding to incidents. One customer estimated the number of people that clicked on harmful links dropped by 84%. Additionally, cybersecurity professional education led to faster onboarding and increases in security team productivity, efficiency, and capabilities.

Operational Savings from Fortinet Technologies
Beyond the accelerated time to detect, contain, investigate, and respond to incidents, ESG modeled the expected operational savings related to security team productivity reported by participants. Results showed that Fortinet EDP technologies could reduce the average time spent per incident by 86%, avoiding the expenditure of $993,000 per year to accomplish the same amount of work. And adding Fortinet CARA technologies could result in a 99% time savings, avoiding $1.14 million in annual operational cost.

In the report, ESG also predicts that Fortinet products can reduce the average time exposed to risk by 97% with EDP and 99% with both EDP and CARA, helping organizations avoid an expected cost of cyberattacks by an average of $1.3 million.

Combining the improved productivity and costs with the risk avoidance savings leads to a payback period of 1 to 2.5 months for Fortinet EDP and 1 to 1.7 months for the combination of EDP and CARA.

Automating Security Operations
The Fortinet SecOps Fabric applies artificial intelligence, machine learning, and integration across the expanded digital attack surface with distributed security controls that span network, endpoint, application, and cloud that detect components and activity designed to bypass traditional security and hide among legitimate operations. At the same time, a centralised approach to broader investigation and response speeds an organisation’s return to safe operation.