Support & Subscriptions
The half of a Fortinet purchase that is not hardware. What each FortiCare tier actually entitles you to, what is inside every FortiGuard bundle, and how to co-terminate renewals so you are not chasing four expiry dates across four quarters.
Where to start
This is the half of a Fortinet purchase that is not hardware, and the half people most often get wrong. A FortiGate with no FortiGuard subscription is a stateful firewall with a VPN: the IPS signatures, the antivirus engine, web and DNS filtering, application control and inline sandboxing all arrive as subscription services.
The trap is specific and expensive. Fortinet's published threat protection figures — the numbers you sized the box on — are measured with IPS, application control and malware protection all running. Buying the hardware on that figure and then licensing a bundle that omits those services means the box will never reach the performance you paid for, and nothing will tell you.
FortiCare is the other half. The tier decides two things during an outage: how fast someone answers, and how fast a replacement arrives. Our rule of thumb is simple — if the device being down stops the business and there is no failover, a business-hours contract means a Friday-evening failure is a Monday-morning fix.
Decide these first
Which security features will you actually enable?
Write them down first, then pick the bundle. We would rather map that than default you to the largest option.
What does an hour of downtime cost at this site?
That number chooses the FortiCare tier. If it is small, a lower tier on each unit of an HA pair is entirely reasonable. If it is large, advanced hardware replacement is not optional.
When does everything currently expire?
Hardware, FortiCare and FortiGuard commonly run to different dates. We co-terminate them so the estate renews once, on one purchase order.
Has anything already lapsed?
An expired FortiGuard subscription leaves the box passing traffic but no longer protecting it, on stale signatures, rarely alarming loudly enough for anyone to notice. Send us your serial numbers and the audit is free.