Fortinet NetOps: Enabling Proactive Network Management

Written by Sanjay Seth, Cybersecurity Consultant at P J Networks Pvt Ltd

So there I am, at my desk—third coffee down, still half-jet lagged from DefCon (huge shoutout to the mad geniuses behind the Hardware Hacking Village)—and a thought crosses my mind that I had during a client session at the beginning of the week.

A CTO of a mid-size bank asked me:

“Is it even possible to avoid network failures? Or is it simply about responding quicker?”

And I paused. Because this question struck a nerve. I’ve been in the networking space long enough to can remember when monitoring was logging into a Telnet session and hoping your line didn’t drop. In those days (late 1993), we were combining coax cables and multiplexing voice/data over PSTN lines like it was voodoo.

Things have changed — but not as much as they ought to have.

1. The Difficulties of Traditional Network Maintenance

Look, here’s the deal:

For example, managing a network like you would a 90s Fiat. You didn’t maintain it based on condition—you just waited ‘till it broke down.” And it often fell on a rainy Monday.

At the time, network admins tended to be trapped in reactive mode.

• Monitor uplinks using SNMP.
• Scan logs manually.
• Panic like mad when latency goes up or packet loss appears.

Sounds familiar? It does—plenty of orgs are doing precisely this. (Including a few very big ones whose names I’m not allowed to disclose.)

The challenges?

• No real-time trends visibility
• High degree of dependence on human intervention.
• Little or no automation.
• Very poor incident response because of noisy alerts.

And don’t get me started on the inefficiencies resulting from antiquated password policies and matchbook firmware updates. No joke, I’ve seen routers in Tier-1 data centers running firmware from 2014.

Don’t even get me started on MPLS links going down every three months and “no one knows why.”

2. Predictive Analytics NetOps

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

Predictive Network Maintenance isn’t just a fancy new name for network operations. The Fortinet failsafe NetOps offload the real-time telemetry, the appliance health, the traffic joints—even the user behavior—and then makes predictions about where failure is likely to strike.

It’s like switching over to a Tesla that tells you your tire will go flat next week.

Predictive Network Maintenance = Foresight + Automation + Intelligent Alerting

Three ways it’s changing the game:

• Trend-based Insights: If your WAN link degrades 30% every Friday and NetOps sees that before users start screaming about Zoom problems.
• Proactive Device Actions: Replace the hardware before it reaches a bombshell state (did this the hard way once with a rogue switch in Mumbai).
• Anomaly Detection: Our advanced analytics (okay, some AI in there, I’m still tentative here) can highlight abnormal usage spikes, even if they don’t really meet the definition of an outage…at least not yet.

At PJ Networks, we’ve embedded these NetOps principles into the way we help secure servers, routers, firewalls and cloud edge infrastructure, particularly under Fortinet’s ecosystem.

Because here’s the deal: Prevention is cheaper than remediation. Always.

3. Monitoring the Health of the Network Using AI

Okay. Now, about that “AI-powered” part.

You are anointed and you become a guru, and if you have been around long enough as I have, you know the hype cycles. Do you remember everything was “cloud based” in 2010? Same vibe.

So I don’t use AI lightly as a term. Except—Fortinet’s access of AI-fueled analytics is legitimately putting your NetOps dashboards to work. Particularly in predictive maintenance.

• It’s not ChatGPT running your network.
• It’s about the logs kept on monitoring ML, packets behaviour, CPU of devices trends, Trend of RAM and understanding Normal vs Futuristic ugly.

Believe me, I was dubious as well — until it helped one of our clients capture a memory leak in a core switch before it ever began flapping BGP routes. That’s not fluff. That’s operational gold.

Even the tools themselves are getting cleaner:

FortiManager + FortiAnalyzer combo offered incredible depth of insights and automated alerting.

• Security Fabric integrates with it all, tying your firewalls together with your endpoint threat telemetry.
• Dashboards have health scoring systems which make it stupid easy for the less technical IT person to know when to raise the alarm.

For me, that’s democratizing proactive security — not just slinging buzzwords.

4. Proactive Maintenance Solutions of PJ Networks

Okay, shameless plug here — but only because it works.

At PJ Networks we have been assisting banks, financial services and mid-sized venues transition from an old style SNMP/CLI monitoring to AI-Driven NetOps and Fortinet.

We’ve created a three-part system:

• Predictive Network Monitoring Agents (at-prem and hybrid networks)
• Monthly Health Scoring Reports (so you can see what’s degrading before it turns to snow)
• Proactive Upgrade + Patch Workflows (automated alerts go straight to our NOC).

A few weeks ago, we deployed this at a regional bank that had been devastated by network downtime complaints.

Post-deployment?

• 40% improved WAN link stability
• Complaints from end-users decreased by 66%
• And guess what? SLA penalties? Gone.

We also plug alerts in directly with ITSMs like ServiceNow or Jira so there is no more check your email for alert logs nonsense either!

QUICK TAKE (for those battling caffeine rejection)

If you’re pressed for time — or if your SOC has been paging you all day — here’s the TL;DR:

• Conventional maintenance is outdated and reactive.
• Fortinet NetOps provides predictive insight to prevent breakdowns before they happen.
• AI is not BS (this time). Actual analytics can reveal a problem before it occurs.
• PJ Networks harnesses predictive network maintenance with real-time visibility.
• Bonus? My team can even catch failing processors in switches before they BSOD.

Conclusion

After three decades in this industry, I have discovered that keeping a healthy network does not come from harebrained heroics but requires quiet vigilance.

There’s nothing magical about Fortinet’s NetOps and AI analytics. But they are crazy efficient if tuned correctly. They allow for the conversion from break-fix pandemonium to calibrated and savvy proactive upkeep.

Our offering is not just set of tools — it’s a way of thinking that we are equipped with at PJ Networks in the form of an AI-driven NetOps.” And Predictive Network Maintenance is all about purview. Catching hardware faults. Predicting congestion in a bandwidth. Detecting attack anomalies before your firewall even registers a threat.

Because if your network is the heart of your digital business (spoiler, it is), then your maintenance strategy is the heartbeat. Keep it steady. Keep it smart.

And don’t wait for a Slammer-like attack to remind you that prevention is always Plan A.

Time for another coffee. Maybe an espresso.

—Sanjay Seth

Cybersecurity Consultant

P J Networks Pvt Ltd

(P.S. If you still have a Cisco 2600 in a rack somewhere we need to chat. Seriously.)