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Getting Started with FortiGate

You're reading from   Getting Started with FortiGate This book will take you from complete novice to expert user in simple, progressive steps. It covers all the concepts you need to administer a FortiGate unit with lots of examples and clear explanations.

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Product type Paperback
Published in Nov 2013
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781782178200
Length 126 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Concepts
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Toc

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.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to , and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Piracy

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Please contact us at with a link to the suspected pirated material.

We appreciate your help in protecting our authors, and our ability to bring you valuable content.

Questions

You can contact us at if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.

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