FortiOS 6.2 Antivirus Best Practices

Antivirus

  • Enable antivirus scanning at the network edge for all services. l Use FortiClient endpoint antivirus scanning for protection against threats that get into your network.
  • Subscribe to FortiGuard AntiVirus Updates and configure your FortiGate unit to receive push updates. This will ensure you receive antivirus signature updates as soon as they are available.
  • To ensure that all AV push updates occur, ensure you have an AV profile enabled in a security policy.
  • Enable only the protocols you need to scan. If you have antivirus scans occurring on the SMTP server, or use FortiMail, it is redundant to have scanning occur on the FortiGate unit as well.
  • Reduce the maximum file size to be scanned. Viruses usually travel in small files of around 1 to 2 megabytes.
  • Do not quarantine files unless you regularly monitor and review them. This is otherwise a waste of space and impacts performance.
  • Examine antivirus reports and log messages periodically. Take particular notice of repeated detections. For example, repeated virus detection in SMTP traffic could indicate a system on your network is infected and is attempting to contact other systems to spread the infection using a mass mailer.

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This entry was posted in Administration Guides, FortiOS 6.2 on by .

About Mike

Michael Pruett, CISSP has a wide range of cyber-security and network engineering expertise. The plethora of vendors that resell hardware but have zero engineering knowledge resulting in the wrong hardware or configuration being deployed is a major pet peeve of Michael's. This site was started in an effort to spread information while providing the option of quality consulting services at a much lower price than Fortinet Professional Services. Owns PacketLlama.Com (Fortinet Hardware Sales) and Office Of The CISO, LLC (Cybersecurity consulting firm).

One thought on “FortiOS 6.2 Antivirus Best Practices

  1. Eric

    Hi Mike! Would you consider doing a blog post on your thoughts / opinions and/or approach to egress filtering? This seems to be overlooked in various cases? I have my own thoughts on it. Thanks!

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