Fortinet - From now on almost all NSE courses available online for free

John Maddison, EVP of Products and CMO at Fortinet

"The current situation has forced many organisations to face rapid change and new risks as they transition to remote workforce models. IT teams are under pressure to effectively secure their organisations in very dynamic environments that require a wide range of security skills. As both a technology company and a learning organisation, we make our entire online catalogue of self-study training courses available free of charge so that any IT professional can expand their knowledge and skills in a timely manner as needed to effectively protect their organisation.

Increased risk with distributed workforces

On a global scale, companies have had to quickly adapt their network to support their employees as they transition from their traditional on-site work environment to telecommuting. To maintain business continuity, IT teams need to ensure that everyone in their organisation is securely set up to remotely access critical resources and applications on the corporate network. In parallel, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the unprecedented increase in remote access to sensitive information and data by looking for security vulnerabilities and shifting attack strategies to targeted telework environments.

According to a recent study by ISC2, nearly two-thirds of organisations lacked the skilled personnel they needed to maintain effective security operations. With the rapidly growing attack surface created by a distributed workforce on a large scale, IT teams need broad security skills more than ever to protect their organisations.

Free training to support timely security skills development.

Fortinet is leveraging its NSE Institute's training and certification programme curriculum to offer 24 free advanced security courses to help IT professionals increase their cybersecurity knowledge and address new risks.

By learning about Fortinet technologies such as FortiGate firewalls, FortiNAC and FortiManager, trainees gain a range of skills to defend any network against threats. Recorded lab demos for these courses will be available on-demand and supplemented by regularly scheduled live sessions with certified Fortinet instructors. During these live sessions, instructors will be available for demo labs and conduct question and answer sessions. Anyone interested in joining Fortinet's free training courses can do so here.

The NSE Institute's story in addressing the cybersecurity skills gap.

Today's launch of additional free cybersecurity courses further builds on Fortinet's existing efforts to address the cyber skills gap through training and education. With over 300,000 NSE certificates issued, Fortinet established the NSE Institute in 2015, which consists of the NSE Training and Certification Programme, the Fortinet Network Security Academy and the Fortinet Veterans Programme. In addition, Fortinet was named Professional Certification Program of the Year at the 2019 CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards.

As part of the programme's free training catalogue, Fortinet offers basic cyber awareness courses for all NSE 1 and NSE 2 level individuals. In addition, FortiGate Essentials training was recently added as an additional course for anyone interested in learning how to use firewall policies, user authentication, routing and SSL VPN.

Securing the expanding attack surface beyond free training

Fortinet is committed to customers and partners not only through free training, but also through existing functionality embedded in Fortinet FortiGate firewalls. For example, existing Fortinet customers already have remote worker solutions embedded in their FortiGate firewalls that can be used at no additional cost. FortiGates are powered by specialised security processors (SPUs) and are capable of scaling to significantly higher capacity. Fortinet's Secure SD-WAN solution is included in every FortiGate appliance, providing customers with reliable and cost-effective connectivity for their branch office employees, improving application performance. And Fortinet's free FortiClient software can be quickly installed on both business and personal devices to establish encrypted VPN connections to the corporate network.

Free advanced training for security professionals

The free curriculum includes all courses supporting security-managed networks, dynamic cloud security, AI-driven security operations and zero-trust network access. Completion of these courses will help cybersecurity professionals defend their networks against a wide variety of ever-changing threats.

NSE Level:

• NSE1
  • The Threat Landscape
• NSE2
• The Evolution of Cybersecurity
• NSE3
  • This course is reserved for Fortinet partners.
• NSE4
  • FortiGate Security
  • FortiGate Infrastructure
• NSE5
  • FortiAnalyzer
  • FortiManager
  • FortiClient EMS
  • FortiSIEM
• NSE6
  • FortiNAC
  • FortiADC
  • FortiDDoS
  • FortiAuthenticator
  • FortiWLC - Fortinet Wireless Controller
  • FortiMail
  • FortiWeb
  • Integrated and Cloud Wireless
  • FortiVoice
• NSE7
  • Advanced Threat Protection
  • Public Cloud
  • Private Cloud
  • Secure Access
  • Enterprise Firewall
• Other
  • SD-WAN
  • FortiEDR
  • FortiInsight
  • FortiSIEM Parser
  • FortiGate Essentials

The only limitation for customers would be the online labs. Here, only recordings are available. However, hands-on labs with a certified Fortinet instructor can be booked for a fee.

The FortiGate Essentials course is recommended for beginners. It teaches the basics and demonstrates how to set up a VPN solution for the home office. The basics include firewall policies, user authentication, routing and SSL VPN. In addition, you will also learn how to use web filters and application control to protect the company network and the employee.

If you or an employee would like to learn more about Fortinet, we recommend a visit to the NSE Institute, which can be found at the following address: https://training.fortinet.com/.