Online, Self-paced Training Courses Previously Open to Partners for Free Now Also Available for Anyone to Expand Technical Security Skills and Broad Cyber Awareness At No Cost

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Apr 28, 2020

John Maddison, EVP of products and CMO at Fortinet

“The current reality has forced many organizations to face rapid change and new risks as they’ve transitioned to remote workforce models. IT teams are under pressure to effectively secure their organizations, in very dynamic environments which require broad security skillsets. As both a technology company and a learning organization, we are making our entire online, self-paced catalogue of advanced training courses available for free so that any IT professional can expand timely knowledge and skills on-demand as needed to effectively protect their organizations.”

News Summary

Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, today announced it is opening the entire online, self-paced catalogue of advanced Network Security Expert training courses for free.

• Fortinet is making 24 advanced security courses available for free that cover topics ranging from Secure SD-WAN, public cloud security and secure access, among others. The majority of courses are from the official Network Security Expert Institute curriculum, which was previously available to Fortinet partners for free, but will now be open to anyone who is interested.
• The courses will be free for the remainder of 2020 to help address the rapidly evolving needs of organizations securing highly distributed and remote workforces. These courses also provide students and anyone looking to start a career in cybersecurity the opportunity to learn new skills or upskill.
• Fortinet’s NSE Institute now offers multiple levels of free training either for broad cyber awareness learning or technical upskilling.

Increased Risk With Distributed Workforces

Globally, organizations have had to quickly adapt their network to support their workforce transitioning from their traditional on-premises work environment to remote telework. To maintain business continuity, IT teams are strained with ensuring everyone in their organization 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 of sensitive information and data by searching for security gaps and shifting attack strategies to target teleworker environments.

According to a recent study from ISC2, nearly two-thirds of companies lacked the skilled staff they needed to maintain effective security operations. With the rapidly expanding attack surface that a distributed workforce at scale has introduced, IT teams need broad security skillsets more than ever, to protect their organizations.

Free Training to Help Develop Timely Security Skills

Fortinet is leveraging curriculum from its NSE Institute’s training and certification program to offer 24 advanced security courses for free to help IT professionals expand their cybersecurity knowledge and address new risks.

By learning about Fortinet technologies, such as FortiGate, FortiNAC and FortiManager, training participants will acquire an array of skills to defend any network against threats. Recorded lab demos for these courses will be available for on-demand viewing and supplemented with regularly scheduled live sessions with Fortinet Certified Trainers. During these live sessions, Trainers will be available to demo labs and conduct Q&A sessions. Anyone interested in getting started with Fortinet’s free training courses can visit here.

For anyone interested in training options beyond self-paced, Fortinet has a worldwide network of Authorized Training Centers (ATCs) providing Fortinet training in a variety of formats, including live virtual instructor lead.  

NSE Institute’s History of Addressing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

Today’s introduction 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 certifications issued, Fortinet established the NSE Institute in 2015, comprised of the NSE training and certification program, the Fortinet Network Security Academy, and the Fortinet Veterans program. In addition, Fortinet was named “Professional Certification Program of the Year” by the 2019 CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards.

As part of the program’s free training catalogue, Fortinet provides foundational cyber awareness courses for anyone through levels NSE 1 and NSE 2. In addition, the 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 just through free trainings but also through existing functionalities 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 charge. Powered by custom security processors (SPUs), FortiGates are capable of scaling to significantly higher capacity. Fortinet’s Secure SD-WAN solution is included in every FortiGate appliance, providing customers reliable and cost-effective connectivity for their branch workers, improving their application performance. And Fortinet’s free FortiClient software can be quickly installed on both business and personal devices to create encrypted VPN connections to the enterprise network.