Fortinet Offers Free Security Training Courses

Fortinet extended its free security training indefinitely after receiving more than 800,000 registrations for the self-paced courses since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortinet extended its free security training indefinitely after receiving more than 800,000 registrations for the self-paced courses since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to an explosion in the number of teleworkers, and this immediately made securing remote networks and users a top priority for organizations across the globe. However, it also amplified existing challenges: namely, the shortage of trained cybersecurity professionals. In April 2020, Fortinet opened its entire Network Security Expert (NSE) Training Institute catalogue of self-paced courses free of charge in part as a way to respond to this crisis. These courses allow IT and security professionals to learn new skills or upskill their security knowledge, and throughout 2020 Fortinet saw an increase in registrations for its cyber awareness training. So today, the vendor said its self-paced, advanced security training courses will remain free beyond 2021. This provides free access to more than 30 security courses on topics ranging from secure SD-WAN, operational technology (OT) security, and cloud security. Fortinet expects to add more courses during the year. Additionally, prerecorded lab demos by cybersecurity experts are available for on-demand viewing. Plus, most of the free courses are official curriculum for the Fortinet NSE Certification Program. This is an eight-level program that has issued more than half a million certifications. Additionally, through a partnership with (ISC)2, individuals can use their free training completion – as well as any NSE training course – to gain continuing professional education credits for CISSP and other (ISC)2 designations. Learners earn one credit for every hour of NSE Training Institute training they do with Fortinet. Alongside the advanced security training, Fortinet also introduced a free Information Security Awareness and Training service. The service leverages the NSE level one training and packages it together with a library of awareness assets and administration tools. This service aims to make it really easy for companies to get started on an enterprise-wide cybersecurity awareness program for all employees.