Few organizations operate in a single environment anymore. Applications are spread across multiple public clouds, core systems stay in the data center, and users connect from branches, home offices and the road. Every one of those connections is traffic that security teams need to see and control.

Each cloud provider offers capable native security tools, and they work well inside that provider's environment. The trouble starts at the boundaries. Native controls aren't designed to follow traffic from one cloud to another, or from a cloud back to on-premises infrastructure.

When every environment has its own rules, logs and console, gaps open up between them. That fragmentation is the hybrid security gap.

Where the Hybrid Cloud Security Gap Shows Up

As environments multiply, the same problems tend to surface:

• Policy drift. Rules written separately for each cloud and the data center slowly diverge, leaving some workloads less protected than others.
• Blind spots. Traffic crossing between clouds, users and on-premises systems is hard to follow when each environment reports in its own format.
• Uneven inspection. East-west traffic between workloads and north-south traffic at the edge often get different levels of scrutiny, depending on where they run.
• Over-broad access. Traditional VPNs put users on the network instead of on the one application they need, which widens the blast radius of a stolen credential.
• Tool sprawl. Separate products and consoles for each environment add training, overhead and room for error.
• Performance trade-offs. Hauling traffic back to a central inspection point adds latency and makes application performance unpredictable.

Left unaddressed, these issues raise risk, complicate audits and slow down incident response.

One Security Layer Across Every Environment

FortiGate VM brings the same enterprise-grade protection to every public cloud you use and to your on-premises infrastructure. As a virtual appliance, it deploys right next to your workloads and scales up or down as demand changes.

With FortiGate VM, security teams can:

• Inspect traffic in every direction. Apply deep inspection to east-west flows between workloads and virtual networks, and to north-south traffic going to and from the internet.
• Contain lateral movement. Segment applications and network zones so a compromised account or system can't move freely.
• Manage policy from one place. Define rules once and apply them across clouds and data centers, which cuts configuration drift and eases compliance.
• See the whole picture. Bring traffic and security events from cloud and traditional infrastructure into a single, consistent view.
• Grant access app by app. Replace broad VPN access with Zero Trust Network Access, which checks identity, device posture and policy before connecting a user to a specific application.
• Inspect closer to the workload. Place controls where applications live to avoid backhauling traffic, reduce latency, and remove bottlenecks.

Built to Work Alongside Native Controls

FortiGate VM isn't meant to replace the security services your cloud providers already offer. It works with them. You can choose the best control for each workload and still keep one coordinated architecture across every cloud and your data center.

Ready to close your hybrid security gap? Start a 30-day FortiGate VM free trial through AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud today. For more information, visit our website.