The past couple of weeks there has been a lot of ramp up to shifting a lot of workforces from their regular reality to a collaborative and remote scenario.  I thought I’d share some things to consider from an edge security perspective when working through this with your team or directly with clients.  The idea is to ensure that the remote staff have the best experience without sacrificing your security.  

(Disclaimer: While I do focus on the Fortinet product stack extensively, a lot of these suggestions should also apply to whatever modern version of the edge you utilize.)

1. Confirm if you require full or split tunnel VPNs.  This decision will greatly impact your general firewall load so be aware.
   
2. Restrict vpn connections to the global geographies that you know they will be coming from.  
3. Confirm what services you actually need to traverse the vpn. If you have a mix of BYOD and corporate issue, separate the devices on different policies as there will be different service requirements
4. Strengthen authentication by utilizing TFA/MFA solutions.  
5. Apply the appropriate UTM filtering to ensure that traffic is being scanned and your servers aren’t being DoS’d.  
6. Utilize IP Reputation databases to create global inbound/outbound deny policies.
7. Utilize Geo-IP databases to create specific country deny policies for any inbound policies.  
8. Implement IPS/IDS/DoS policies with quarantining.  The faster your firewall gets rid of the attack the better.  Use IPS on your inbound policies and on critical interfaces like your WAN.  
9. QoS…. Do not forget QoS especially when using full vpn tunnels.  Even at a basic level splitting common applications and services to high, med, or low priority can be a game changer.  Pay attention to the QoS guidelines for services like Microsoft Teams.  
10. Monitor and log as much as possible.  Know what your utilizations are and identify your weaknesses.  

This past week, these have been the top items on my list from a consulting perspective. As they questions and requests from clients have poured in, these have been the active check list.  I am curious to see how this next week turns out as people settle in with the remote work and collaboration  

Best of luck to all!