On January 13, 2022, Google joined with other technology industry leaders at the White House Open Source Software Security Summit to help inform the Biden Administration on ways to strengthen cybersecurity. Open source software code is available to the public, and free for anyone to use, modify, or inspect. Because it is freely available, open source software is used for everything from corporate innovation to national security systems and international projects. However, despite its importance, the security of these systems is only maintained on an ad-hoc volunteer basis.

Google utilized this meeting with the Biden Administration to advocate for the creation of an organization to act as a marketplace for open source maintenance; matching volunteers from companies with the critical projects that need the most support.

You can read more about Google’s open source work here.

When the workforce largely transitioned to the work-from-home model, the number of network access points rose astronomically. Network security was strained in many company networks while they became open to a host of new security challenges due to the access from home offices and public networks. To address these challenges, Fortinet developed a new long-term strategy for the workforce by blending security and connectivity through services and such as software-defined wide-area networking, secure access service edge, zero trust access, and zero trust network to protect networks no matter where employees are accessing them from.

But the biggest change Fortinet has proposed is changing to organizational structure and culture to achieve a convergence of security and infrastructure by removing organizational silos so security can be seamlessly deployed across every network edge. 

Forward-thinking business leaders are investing in new converged technologies. Advanced solutions that blend connectivity and security into a single solution—like software-defined wide-area networking (SD-WAN), secure access service edge (SASE), zero trust access (ZTA), and zero trust network access (ZTNA)—protect hybrid networks by extending enterprise-grade network connectivity and security functions to the home office.

This is essential for ensuring a temporary WFH policy becomes a long-term strategy for running a digital business. Making the right investments requires thinking about security and networking as a converged solution, a security-defined network approach, rather than as discrete elements.

Learn more about this valuable program here.