Once cyber attackers breach an enterprise, they will likely be able to compromise it in as little as 60 seconds, according the 2016 Verizon Data Breach Report.

With a single minute to stop an attack, a string of point-solutions sluggishly pinging each other is not an ideal defense for businesses, according to John Maddison, senior vice president of products and solutions at Fortinet Inc. “This really slows them down in moving forward toward this new digital framework in that a lot of these solutions and products don’t talk to each other,” he said.

Fortinet’s goal with new release FortiOS 5.6 is to speed up the sharing of threat intelligence and, more importantly, threat mitigation intelligence, Maddison told John Furrier (@furrier), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)

The company began to use security fabric to fill communication gaps with its introduction of FortiOS 5.4 a year ago.

“This is the ability for all our security products and our partners to share threat intelligence and mitigation information peer-to-peer extremely fast — within seconds,” Maddison stated.

The 5.6 release expands the fabric to include visibility of access points, network switches and reporting, he said, adding that it also includes new regulatory framework and the ability to run audits.

API partners

Fortinet has brought on several partners to share intelligence on the fabric through several application program interfaces, Maddison said. It is part of The Cyber Threat Alliance, which works to combat hackers and cyber attacks (such as WannaCry ransomware, about which Fortinet will hold a webinar tomorrow). The company believes in pooling security talent and technologies with others to fight threats.

Fortinet, however, is not a Frankenstein stitched together with APIs and management consoles, Maddison explained. Its network operating system developed organically into a tight mesh, which enables speed and is a differentiator for the company, he added.

Tight end-to-end visibility is also the goal of Fortinet’s new Cloud Access Security Broker solution for access and intelligence, even off the network.

“End-to-end doesn’t just mean my device on my network connected to my data center — in the future, it means any device anywhere in the world connected to any application, any cloud,” Maddison concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below. (* Disclosure: Fortinet Inc. sponsored this segment on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Fortinet nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE