What is the Fortinet Threat Map?

The Fortinet Threat Map is a dynamic visual tool designed to provide real-time geographic insights into network security events. It displays network activity and incoming threats on a global map, enabling organizations to quickly identify the origins and nature of cyberattacks targeting their systems.

This feature, often integrated within Fortinet's security management platforms like FortiView in FortiWeb, helps security teams gain immediate situational awareness by visualizing the global threat landscape as it unfolds.

Key Features and Capabilities

The Fortinet Threat Map offers several crucial functionalities for cybersecurity professionals to monitor and understand their threat environment:

• Geographic Visualization: The map vividly presents network activity and threats by geographic region. This global perspective makes it intuitive to grasp the distribution and concentration of cyber threats worldwide, allowing for a quick scan of hot spots.
• Real-time Threat Monitoring: A core strength of the Fortinet Threat Map is its ability to display threats in real-time from specific countries. Users can select an option, typically labeled "now," to view incoming threats as they happen, providing immediate and actionable intelligence on current attacks.
• Origin Identification: By pinpointing the geographic location of threat sources, the map helps organizations understand where attacks are originating, which can be critical for threat intelligence and policy making.
• Global Perspective: It offers a high-level, comprehensive overview of the entire threat landscape impacting an organization's network, ranging from specific country-level attacks to broader global trends.

How the Fortinet Threat Map Enhances Security

Utilizing the Fortinet Threat Map significantly enhances an organization's security posture by:

• Providing Instant Situational Awareness: Security teams can instantly grasp the current state of their network's exposure, identifying active attacks and their geographic sources at a glance.
• Facilitating Proactive Defense: By understanding threat origins and patterns, organizations can develop more targeted and effective security policies. For example, they might choose to block traffic from known malicious regions or bolster defenses against specific types of attacks prevalent in certain areas.
• Supporting Incident Response: During an active security incident, the map can help visualize the attack vector and spread, aiding in quicker and more informed response actions.
• Informing Strategic Decisions: Trends observed on the threat map over time can inform long-term security strategies, resource allocation, and investments in specific defense mechanisms.

Accessing and Utilizing the Threat Map

The Fortinet Threat Map is typically a component of Fortinet's security management and analytics platforms, such as FortiWeb's FortiView section, FortiAnalyzer, or FortiManager. Users access this feature through the product's administrative interface. Within the map window, options are usually available to customize views, filter data, and select different timeframes (like "now" for real-time viewing) to analyze threat patterns effectively.

Key Aspects of the Fortinet Threat Map