Preface

Fortinet is one of the leading vendors of network security solutions in the world. Its FortiGate family of products is widely used and appreciated and includes solutions optimized for high-end, mid-range, desktop, and virtual scenarios. Such a success means that security professionals, networking experts, and system administrators often have to manage (or at least have to deal with) a FortiGate appliance. The documentation as well as training courses available on the Fortinet knowledge base are of excellent quality. Nevertheless, the first impact with a complex apparatus as the FortiGate, often creates significant difficulties. Getting started with FortiGate has the purpose of introducing the main functionality of the FortiGate appliance, using the latest release available of FortiOS (5.0). Routing, security filters, security policies, tunneling, and high availability are introduced and then demonstrated with practical configuration examples. This way the text provides the reader with an experience as close as possible to what is required in real-world scenarios.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, First Steps, introduces the basic administrative tools of a FortiGate administrator (web-based manager and CLI). After a quick overview of the fundamental steps we have to take for a FortiGate unit to be operational, the text explains essential concepts and procedures related to VLANs and routing.

Chapter 2, Filters, Policies, and Endpoint Security, explains UTM as the main topic of this chapter, as UTM includes a large part of the services we use on a FortiGate unit. The chapter will talk about security profiles, web filters, antivirus, anti-spam, and endpoint security.

Chapter 3, VPNs and Tunnelling, is dedicated to explaining the available kind of VPNs in a FortiGate unit, SSL, and IPSEC. VPNs enable to use inexpensive connections to create a secure channel over insecure networks.

Chapter 4, High Availability, explores the different solutions for high availability (HA) and load balancing available for FortiGate units. The text will talk about link aggregation, clustering, and VDOMs.

Chapter 5, Troubleshooting, examines the previous contents from a troubleshooting point of view. Tools to debug and correct errors related to routing, security policies, VDOMS, VPNs, and HA are explained here.

What you need for this book

A FortiGate network security appliance (physical or virtual) with FortiOS 5.0 is required to use the topics presented in the book. Some desktop class appliances will not include all the services explained in the text.

Who this book is for

Getting Started With FortiGate is a starting point when you have to administer or configure a FortiGate unit, especially if you have no previous experience. For people who have never managed a FortiGate unit, the book walks through the basic concepts and common mistakes. The book is suited to the needs of network administrators, security managers, and IT professionals.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: “The aforementioned administrative task requires the use of the config vpn l2tp command in the CLI.”

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

config antivirus settings | set default-db extended | end
config antivirus settings | set grayware enable | end

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: “The resulting data is included in the Device definition menu under the Device tab in the User & Device option.”

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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