Why should a small or midsize business rethink its approach to cybersecurity now?
Cybersecurity has become a business risk issue for small and midsize businesses (SMBs), not just a technical concern.
Recent research shows that organizations with fewer than 500 employees now face an average data breach cost of $3.31 million, a 13.4% increase. For most SMBs, an incident of that size can impact cash flow, reputation, and even long-term viability.
Several trends are driving this:
- New technologies and cloud services expand the attack surface.
- Hybrid and work-from-anywhere models make it harder to protect users and devices consistently.
- Threats are more automated and sophisticated, including zero-day and AI-driven attacks.
Because of this, relying on basic tools, point products, or a patchwork of vendors often leaves gaps. Fortinet Small and Midsize Business Security Solutions are designed to help SMBs rethink security with a single-vendor approach that:
- Provides complete protection across offices, users, and applications
- Delivers a clear return on investment by consolidating tools and licenses
- Scales as the business grows, without adding unnecessary complexity
In short, the rising cost and complexity of attacks make it important for SMBs to adopt a more integrated, modern security foundation rather than treating cybersecurity as an afterthought.
What does Fortinet offer specifically for SMBs, and how does it simplify security?
Fortinet Small and Midsize Business Security Solutions are built to give SMBs complete protection while keeping operations manageable for lean IT teams.
The core building blocks are:
1. **Secure offices**
- **FortiGate next-generation firewalls (NGFWs):**
- The most deployed firewall worldwide, converging networking and security in one device.
- Replaces traditional routers and adds advanced security such as anti-malware, IPS, SSL deep inspection, VPN, and web/content filtering.
- Includes built-in Secure SD-WAN at no additional cost to improve cloud application performance while maintaining security.
- **FortiSwitch:**
- Stackable switches with Power over Ethernet (PoE) to support growing wired networks.
- **FortiAP:**
- High-performance, Wi-Fi 6–ready wireless access points for dense office environments.
Together, FortiGate, FortiSwitch, and FortiAP create a secure, high-performance connectivity layer for the office. Security policies can be extended from the firewall to switches and access points, so you don’t have to manage each piece separately.
2. **Secure users (on-site and remote)**
- **FortiSASE (secure access service edge):**
- Cloud-delivered security that extends on-site protections to remote and hybrid workers.
- Centralized, cloud-based management with simple onboarding and user-based licensing.
- **FortiClient unified endpoint agent:**
- A single client on user devices that provides antivirus, ransomware protection, and malware prevention.
- Integrates endpoints into the Fortinet Security Fabric for visibility, compliance checks, vulnerability management, and automation.
3. **Secure applications (public, private, and multi-cloud)**
- **FortiGate virtual machines (VMs):**
- Built for public, private, and multi-cloud environments.
- Help you safely leverage cloud scalability and pay-as-you-go models while enforcing consistent security policies across locations.
4. **AI-powered security services and centralized management**
- **FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services:**
- AI-driven threat intelligence and security capabilities to protect against known, unknown, zero-day, and emerging AI-based threats.
- For SMBs, the **Unified Threat Protection (UTP) Bundle** includes IPS, advanced malware protection, application control, URL/DNS/video filtering, antispam, and FortiCare Premium support.
- **FortiGate Cloud:**
- Cloud-based management, analytics, and reporting for FortiGate devices and VMs.
- Provides a single pane of glass to manage branches and sites and reduce cyber risk.
By consolidating Layer 7 routing, multiple security services, and SD-WAN into FortiGate—and extending those protections to switches, wireless, endpoints, and cloud—Fortinet helps SMBs:
- Reduce the number of separate products and licenses
- Lower administrative overhead and manual effort
- Improve visibility and consistency of security policies across the business
This single-vendor, Security Fabric–based approach is designed to increase operational efficiency while maintaining strong protection as your organization grows.
How does Fortinet help protect remote workers and cloud applications for SMBs?
Fortinet’s SMB solutions are designed to secure both people and applications as work and data move beyond the traditional office.
**1. Securing remote and hybrid workers**
Many SMBs now support a hybrid workforce, which expands the attack surface and makes consistent policy enforcement more challenging. Fortinet addresses this with:
- **FortiSASE (secure access service edge):**
- A cloud-delivered security service that extends on-site protections to users wherever they are.
- Provides secure access and high-performance connectivity to the internet, SaaS, and corporate resources.
- Offers simple cloud-based management, self-service design, easy user onboarding, and flexible, user-based licensing.
- **FortiClient unified endpoint agent:**
- A single client on user devices that delivers antivirus, ransomware protection, and malware prevention.
- Integrates endpoints into the Fortinet Security Fabric for:
- Native endpoint visibility
- Compliance control
- Vulnerability management
- Automated responses to threats
- **VPN and policy consistency:**
- FortiGate NGFWs provide secure VPN connectivity so remote users can connect to office resources over encrypted tunnels.
- Security policies can be applied consistently whether users are on or off the corporate network.
**2. Securing cloud-based applications and data**
As SMBs adopt cloud computing to gain flexibility and speed, they also need to ensure that data and applications remain protected beyond the data center. Fortinet supports this by helping you:
- **Securely access cloud applications with SD-WAN:**
- Built-in Secure SD-WAN in FortiGate improves performance and reliability for cloud-based applications over multiple network paths.
- It self-heals for data loss and network speed issues before they affect the application experience.
- **Use virtual firewalls in the cloud:**
- **FortiGate virtual machines (VMs)** provide security across public, private, and multi-cloud environments.
- They help you:
- Safely leverage cloud scalability, metering, and faster time to market
- Enforce consistent security policies wherever workloads run
- Optimize budgets with flexible licensing and on-demand usage models
- **Apply AI-powered protection to cloud workloads:**
- FortiGate (physical and virtual) can use **FortiGuard AI-Powered Security Services** to scan for threats, enforce access control, and protect data across clouds and offices.
**3. Centralized visibility and control**
To tie everything together, Fortinet provides:
- **FortiGate Cloud** for cloud-based management, analytics, and reporting across devices and sites.
- Automated information sharing across the Fortinet Security Fabric so that different components see and respond to threats in a coordinated way.
For SMBs, this means you can build a secure, cloud-connected workplace where:
- Office networks, remote users, and cloud applications are protected under a unified strategy
- Policies are consistent across locations and environments
- Security operations remain manageable as the business grows and the IT landscape evolves