Derek Manky, Fortinet | Fortinet Accelerate 2018

Derek Manky, Fortinet, sits with Lisa Martin & Peter Burris for Fortinet Accelerate 2018 in Las Vegas, NV.

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Security experts seek strength in numbers as hacking threats rise

The theme at Fortinet Inc.’s Accelerate conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week is “Strength in Numbers,” based on the need for a collaborative environment where partnerships can generate the solutions necessary to secure networks in the future. It’s an important task, especially since the numbers surrounding the current global threat environment are rising at an alarming rate.

“If you look at the numbers, it’s an exponential curve right now,” said Derek Manky (pictured), global security strategist at Fortinet. “We were seeing about a million hacking attempts in just one minute across the entire globe. Now it’s increased to over 4 million.”

Threat sharing with partners and competitors
To counter the escalating threats, Fortinet has developed its own partnership initiative in addition to participating in external alliances as well. The company’s Fabric-Ready Partners Program encourages the collection and sharing of threat information across the ecosystem of Fortinet’s customer base. Fortinet is also a founding member of the Cyber Threat Alliance, an industry group that includes Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp., Palo Alto Networks Inc., and Symantec Corp., whose mission is to work together in exchanging threat data and improving global defenses.

“Strength in numbers means collaboration, information flow, and end-to-end coverage between the security solutions,” Manky said. “The more that we can interweave the fabric and connect the different nodes together and share intelligence, that becomes a much stronger structure.”

Collecting and sharing actionable intelligence also requires an ability to assess the current landscape in networks around the globe. Fortinet offers a no-cost, no-interruption service called the Cyber Threat Assessment Program, where the company’s security engineers will run validation tests on a network to gather information on vulnerabilities. This may also include identifying previous attack profiles, useful information in determining future threat models.

“If you can understand who your enemy is, what they’re up to, then you can start building an appropriate security strategy around that,” Manky said. “If there’s an attack happening on a national level, we should be able to work together to combat the threat.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Fortinet Accelerate 2018. (* Disclosure: Fortinet Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Fortinet nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)