Cyber Security
Fortinet Addresses Cybersecurity Skills Gap with New Initiatives

Fortinet has announced significant progress in its mission to address the cybersecurity skills shortage. Through its Training Institute programs, Fortinet has trained over half a million people since pledging to train 1 million by the end of 2026.
John Maddison, Chief Marketing Officer at Fortinet said, “Through our longstanding investments to address the cyber talent shortage, Fortinet continues to grow and expand our programs and strategic partnerships by delivering an award-winning cybersecurity training and certification program. Addressing the cyber skills gap is vital to enhancing our society’s collective cyber resiliency and we are committed to developing the current and future cyber workforce through the Fortinet Training Institute. As part of this effort, we remain focused on our pledge to train 1 million individuals in cyber by 2026.”
The demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals continues to rise, with an estimated 4.8 million needed to fill the industry’s workforce gap. Fortinet’s 2024 Global Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report revealed that 70% of organizations believe the shortage of skilled professionals is increasing their security risks.
Fortinet is at the forefront of addressing this gap by providing award-winning training and certification programs. Recent achievements include:
- Award-Winning Cybersecurity Curriculum: Fortinet’s programs have been recognized with multiple awards, including the 2024 SC Awards for Best Professional Certification Program.
- European Commission Partnership: Fortinet has pledged to offer free cybersecurity training to up to 75,000 individuals in Europe over the next three years.
- Indian Partnerships: Fortinet is partnering with the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and EduSkills Foundation to offer 100,000 virtual internships and free certification programs in India.
- Cyber Bootcamps: Fortinet has hosted cybersecurity and networking boot camps worldwide, including a threat-hunting workshop for participants of the MITRE Embedded Capture the Flag (eCTF) competition.
- Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives: Fortinet is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive cyber workforce through partnerships with organizations like Women in CyberSecurity (WiCyS) and programs focused on veterans and underserved communities.
Fortinet’s Training Institute delivers training and certifications to IT and security professionals, students, and educators through various programs supported by over 700 partners globally. The company is also involved in public-private partnerships, such as the White House’s National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy, to expand access to cybersecurity training.
Cloud
SentinelOne Simplifies Secure Cloud Migrations on AWS

SentinelOne today announced its participation in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Workload Migration Program. This initiative supports AWS Partner Network (APN) members with SaaS offerings on AWS to accelerate and streamline workload migrations.
Through the program, SentinelOne will provide AWS customers with accelerated, secure cloud migration support, leveraging modern AI-powered CNAPP capabilities to ensure rapid and protected transitions. With access to AWS funding, technical resources, and go-to-market support, SentinelOne will help organizations reduce migration timelines and costs while maintaining robust security.
SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security delivers real-time visibility and protection throughout the migration journey—whether from on-premises or another cloud—enabling a secure, seamless transition to AWS.
“Through our participation in the AWS ISV Workload Migration Program, SentinelOne is helping customers accelerate secure cloud migrations with end-to-end protection and visibility,” said Ric Smith, President of Product, Technology, and Operations at SentinelOne. “Whether moving from on-prem or another cloud to AWS, organizations can count on us to deliver the security they need throughout their journey—realizing the performance, speed, agility, and cost benefits of the cloud.”
Singularity Cloud Security combines agentless and agent-based protection for deep visibility, continuous posture management, and real-time threat detection across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. By collaborating with AWS and ecosystem partners, SentinelOne ensures seamless integration into migration projects, helping customers move faster, reduce risk, and scale confidently in the cloud.
Availability: SentinelOne’s solutions are available globally.
Cyber Security
Beyond Blocklists: How Behavioural Intent Analysis Can Safeguard Middle East Businesses from Rising AI-Driven Bot Threats

The Middle East is facing an unprecedented surge in AI-driven bot attacks, with malicious automation now outpacing traditional defenses. Mohammad Ismail, Vice President for EMEA at Cequence Security, warns that legacy tools like IP blocklists and rate limiting are no match for today’s sophisticated threats (more…)
Cyber Security
Sophos Boosts Firewall with New Protection and Incident Response Features

Sophos has announced a significant update to its Sophos Firewall software, introducing enhanced protection and incident response capabilities. This update notably includes Sophos NDR Essential, a new feature now available free of charge to all customers holding an XStream Protection license for Sophos Firewall.
This integration empowers Sophos Firewall with two dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) engines specifically designed to detect both malware communications and those utilizing algorithmically generated domain names. This advanced functionality, derived from the Sophos Network Detection and Response (NDR) probe, aims to identify sophisticated malware communications even if they are previously unknown or not yet indexed. It serves as a powerful complement to the Active Threat Response capabilities already embedded within Sophos firewalls.

Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos
Addressing the technical demands of such advanced detection, Chris McCormack, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Sophos, explained the strategic approach, “NDR traffic analysis requires substantial processing power. That’s why we’ve adopted a new approach by deploying an NDR solution in Sophos Cloud to offload the heaviest tasks from the firewall.” This cloud-centric design ensures optimal performance without burdening the firewall’s on-device resources.
Beyond network detection, the update also brings significant improvements to connectivity and user authentication. Sophos Connect now integrates EntraID for Single Sign-On (SSO). This new feature for the VPN client, bundled with Sophos Firewall, is set to enhance both the security and user experience for SSL and IPsec VPN connections. The integration with EntraID (Azure AD) enables users to authenticate and leverage multi-factor authentication for both Sophos Connect and access to the user portal hosted by the firewall, streamlining secure access.
Further VPN-related enhancements include:
- Improved user interface and usability: Connection types have been renamed for greater clarity, with “site-to-site” now referred to as “policy-based” and tunnel interfaces as “route-based,” making configurations more intuitive.
- Dynamic validation of the IP address pool: For VPN connections (SSL VPN, IPsec, L2TP, and PPTP), the system now dynamically validates the allocated IP address pool, helping to better resolve potential IP address conflicts.
- Strict profile enforcement: IPsec profiles now exclude default values to ensure algorithm synchronization, effectively eliminating potential fragmentation of session negotiation packets that could otherwise prevent site-to-site VPN tunnels from being established.
- Route-based VPN and SD-RED scalability: The system has been optimized to support up to 3,000 simultaneously established tunnels. Specifically, Sophos Firewall solutions can now manage up to 1,000 SD-RED site-to-site tunnels and connect up to 650 concurrent SD-RED devices.
Additional management improvements enhance administrative flexibility and search capabilities:
- More flexible DHCP Prefix Delegation (IPv6 DHCP-PD): The system now supports a broader range of prefixes, from /48 to /64, improving compatibility with various internet service providers.
- Router Advertisement (RA) and DHCPv6 server: These features are now enabled by default, simplifying IPv6 network setup.
- Resizable table columns: The web admin interface continues its adaptation for ultra-wide screens, with many configuration pages now allowing users to resize columns as needed for improved usability.
- Enhanced object search functionality: The search field within the SD-WAN routing configuration screen now supports more granular criteria, including route name, ID, objects, and object values like IP addresses and domains. Similarly, local ACL rules now also support object name and value searches, extending to content-based searches for more precise results.
- Default configuration changes: To streamline initial setups, default firewall rules and rule groups previously created during new firewall deployments have been removed. The initial configuration now only includes the default network rule and MTA rules. Furthermore, the default firewall rule group and the default gateway probe for custom gateways are now set to “None” by default.
Sophos continues its commitment to cybersecurity through a “Secure by Design” approach, enhancing the intrinsic security of its firewalls. This methodology involves the containerization of specific features and rigorous integrity checks on critical operating system files using mathematical checksums. Any detected checksum mismatch triggers a potential compromise alert, enabling monitoring teams to proactively identify possible security incidents affecting the firewall OS integrity. This proactive detection allows incident response and development teams to react swiftly to critical security events.
This update is now available for manual download and deployment by customers with any Sophos Firewall equipped with a valid license.
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