
Executive Summary
Fortinet’s recent introduction of the FortiGate 700G series marks a significant advancement in Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) technology, purpose-built to address the evolving security and networking demands of today’s complex campus environments. This new series leverages Fortinet’s proprietary ASIC technology and unified operating system, FortiOS, to deliver exceptional performance, advanced threat protection, and energy efficiency, solidifying the firewall’s foundational role within the Fortinet Security Fabric.
Optimizing Campus Security and Operations
Modern campus networks are characterized by an explosive growth in users, devices (including a vast array of IoT), and applications, creating an increasingly fragmented and challenging security landscape. The FortiGate 700G series is designed to tackle this complexity head-on, delivering deep visibility, granular control, and streamlined management essential for robust campus security and operational efficiency.
Fortinet’s strategy with the 700G focuses on extending the capabilities of its Security Fabric to meet these unique campus demands:
- Comprehensive Visibility and Granular Control: The 700G provides unparalleled insight into all traffic flowing across the campus network, identifying applications, users, and devices (including shadow IT and unmanaged IoT devices). This deep visibility enables security teams to enforce precise, context-aware policies, controlling what can access the network, what applications can be used, and by whom. This is crucial for maintaining compliance and preventing unauthorized activities across diverse campus segments.
- Granular Segmentation and Threat Containment: The FortiGate 700G enables robust network segmentation, effectively limiting lateral threat movement and protecting critical assets across campus and distributed environments. Leveraging VLAN-based policy enforcement, VXLAN support, and deep integration with the Fortinet Security Fabric (including FortiSwitch and FortiAP), it dynamically segments users, devices, and applications. This capability ensures that sensitive areas like research labs, administrative networks, and IoT zones can be logically isolated and secured. Ultimately, the 700G minimizes the blast radius of potential breaches, significantly reducing attack surfaces and enforcing zero-trust principles at scale.
- Integrated Networking Capabilities: As campuses typically include a robust networking infrastructure along with their security architecture, the 700G converges networking and security into a common platform. It acts as a central security and networking hub, converging wired and wireless network management. This unified approach simplifies deployment and consistent policy enforcement across the entire distributed campus, reducing operational overhead and improving network performance. This is analogous to SD-Branch capabilities at small sites making deployments simple and effective for IT.
- Streamlined Management within the Security Fabric: The FortiGate 700G is a core component of the Fortinet Security Fabric, which provides a single-pane-of-glass management experience through tools like FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer. These centralized controls simplify policy deployment, automates security workflows, and offers rich analytics and reporting, freeing up valuable IT resources and improving the overall efficiency of security operations for large and complex campus networks.
Essentially, the FortiGate 700G series helps organizations simplify their security architecture, enhance protection against sophisticated threats, and improve operational agility by intelligently converging networking and security functions at the campus edge.
Key Capabilities and Enhancements (FortiGate 700G Series)
The FortiGate 700G series stands out with several notable features:
- Intelligent Security: Integrated with FortiGuard Advanced Threat Intelligence Services, the FortiGate 700G provides real-time threat detection and automated responses against sophisticated cyber threats, including ransomware, malware, and zero-day exploits. This integration of intelligent capabilities enhances the firewall’s ability to identify and neutralize emerging threats.
- Unified Operating System (FortiOS): FortiOS provides a cohesive and powerful operating environment. New capabilities within FortiOS, such as post-quantum cryptography readiness, position the 700G series to protect sensitive data against future quantum-era threats, making it a future-proof investment for organizations in highly regulated sectors like finance, healthcare, and government.
- Energy Efficiency: A critical consideration for modern IT infrastructure, the 700G series boasts superior energy efficiency, consuming substantially fewer watts per Gbps than many competitor offerings. This contributes to reduced operational costs and supports sustainability initiatives for enterprises.
- Broad Connectivity Support: The series supports a wide range of network interfaces, from 5GE to 25GE, offering the flexibility required to adapt to diverse network topologies and accommodate future technology upgrades without major overhauls.
Relevance for Modern Campuses and IoT
The FortiGate 700G series is specifically designed to provide a robust security foundation for large campus networks, where the attack surface is continuously expanding due to the proliferation of users, devices, and applications. Its high performance and advanced threat protection are crucial for securing vast networks with diverse traffic patterns.
Furthermore, its capabilities are highly relevant for Internet of Things (IoT) use cases. As campuses and industrial sites integrate more IoT devices for automation, monitoring, and data collection, the need for deterministic security, micro-segmentation, and efficient traffic management becomes paramount. The 700G series can effectively secure IoT deployments by providing deep packet inspection, application control, and automated threat detection for these often unmanaged devices. It complements Fortinet’s broader focus on Operational Technology (OT) security, which also includes ruggedized FortiGate models designed to withstand the harsh environmental conditions found in many industrial IoT settings.
Competitive Landscape
The Next-Generation Firewall market is highly competitive, with Fortinet consistently recognized as a leader. Two of the primary competitors offering robust NGFW solutions are Palo Alto Networks and Check Point Software Technologies.
- Palo Alto Networks (e.g., PA-Series):
- Strengths: Palo Alto Networks is widely considered an industry standard for NGFWs, often praised for its strong focus on application-level visibility (App-ID), user identification, and advanced threat prevention, including inline machine learning for zero-day threats. Their platform architecture, based on a single-pass software engine, aims for predictable performance across various environments (physical, virtual, containerized). They are often perceived as having highly advanced features and granular control, making them suitable for large enterprises with mature security teams.
- Comparison to FortiGate 700G: While Palo Alto excels in depth of features and robust threat prevention, Fortinet’s 700G series emphasizes superior performance with its ASICs, leading to higher throughputs and better price-performance ratios. Fortinet is also often cited for its ease of use and consolidated management within the Fortinet Security Fabric, which can simplify operations compared to Palo Alto’s perceived higher complexity.
- Check Point Software Technologies (e.g., Quantum Security Gateways):
- Strengths: Check Point is a long-standing player in the firewall market, known for its strong emphasis on “prevention-first” security. Their Quantum Security Gateways offer comprehensive threat prevention, including advanced sandboxing (SandBlast Zero-Day Protection), intrusion prevention, and extensive application control. Check Point also provides centralized management and a focus on preventing patient zero.
- Comparison to FortiGate 700G: Check Point’s Quantum line delivers robust security and high throughput, with a particular focus on advanced threat emulation and extraction. However, Fortinet’s 700G with its dedicated ASICs often leads in raw firewall throughput and IPsec VPN performance. While Check Point offers strong security, Fortinet is frequently noted for its competitive pricing and often simpler, more intuitive management interface for a broad range of features integrated into a single platform, whereas Check Point can sometimes be perceived as more complex to manage, particularly for certain features.
In essence, while competitors like Palo Alto Networks and Check Point offer compelling NGFW solutions with their own unique strengths, Fortinet’s FortiGate 700G series distinguishes itself through its optimized ASIC-driven performance, integrated intelligent capabilities, and a focus on operational simplicity within a comprehensive security fabric, making it highly competitive for modern campus and edge security requirements.
Analyst Take
The FortiGate 700G series solidifies Fortinet’s market standing, delivering a high-performance, efficient NGFW well-suited for the dynamic campus. Its integration of advanced security features and energy efficiency positions it as a key enabler for secure digital transformation and IoT expansion. While competing solutions from Palo Alto Networks and Check Point offer compelling features, the ASIC-driven performance and seamless Security Fabric integration of the 700G make it a strong recommendation for organizations prioritizing robust security with optimized operational costs.