Author Archives: Manny Fernandez

I have been in the networking and security field for over 27 years. I started working for resellers back in the Novell days. I obtained my CNE, Master CNE, GroupWise CNE and later moved on to Microsoft with the MCSE. I have obtained numerous industry certifications from Palo Alto, Cisco, Checkpoint, Juniper, RSA, Fortinet, Linux and other. I have worked on every firewall produced since the 1990's from Novell's Border Manager to IP Tables to FortiOS and everything in-between. I have either migrated to or from all of these platforms. It is my passion. I love what I do so I do not consider it work. Today I work for a manufacturer. By far, I enjoy this side much more so hope to continue doing so.

Using Certificate to Login into a Fortigate

* Sometimes you may want to use a certificate to authenticate to you Fortigate firewall. This is a simple process…

By Manny Fernandez

February 11, 2019

Configuring FortiExtender

For those of you that have not heard or seen FortiExtender, it is a 3G/4G LTE modem that can be…

By Manny Fernandez

February 1, 2019

Fortilink over TCP

If you are not familiar with FortiLink, you should get familiar with it. Fortilink allows you to manage FortiSwitches via…

By Manny Fernandez

January 28, 2019

Initial Setup of FortiDeceptor 1000F

Today I recieved my FortiDeceptor 1000F Appliance. For those who are not familiar with the product, it is deception technology…

By Manny Fernandez

January 25, 2019

Locking down your network DNS traffic using Fortinet

Here is a subject that is near-and-dear to me. I love collecting and analyzing DNS traffic. It is extrmemly informative…

By Manny Fernandez

January 24, 2019

Enhancing the security TO the Fortigate, not just THROUGH it.

The IPS policies on the Fortigate are defined and assigned to policies. This means that the packets match the packets…

By Manny Fernandez

January 21, 2019

Renaming Multiple Files in macOS

I attended a partner’s Sales Kick Off meeting this past week. One of the Account Managers left her phone on…

By Manny Fernandez

January 13, 2019

Upgrading my ESXi 6.0 to 6.7

OK, I know. Crazy that I have a 6.0 ESXi server in my midst. The truth is, I do not…

By Manny Fernandez

January 8, 2019

Fortigate HA in 5 Minutes

Here is a quick 5 min HA configuration for the Fortigate. On the Master Fortigate config system ha set group-name…

By Manny Fernandez

January 3, 2019

Using OpenSSL to Provision Wildcard Certificate

I have my lab set up with plenty of gear from Fortinet, Cisco, Palo Alto and Checkpoint. In order to…

By Manny Fernandez

January 3, 2019

Multi-Regional AD VPN using Fortigate Firewalls and BGP

Disclaimer: This was a client installation. All names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of the customer.…

By Manny Fernandez

December 20, 2018

My Backup Strategy

Anyone that has lost data before vows to never have it happen again. Sadly, some people stop at that and…

By Manny Fernandez

December 17, 2018

Using Symbolic Links to Sync Dropbox and other Cloud Storage Services

As you may know, Dropbox is an awesome solution for syncing files. It CAN serve as a backup as well…

By Manny Fernandez

December 16, 2018

Using OpenSSL for Your Internal Servers

If you are like me, you have a bunch of servers and applications that run internally at home or in…

By Manny Fernandez

December 4, 2018

Merging PCAP files from the CLI

With the Fortigate 6Ks, when you do a packet capture from the GUI, it will save multiple PCAP files into…

By Manny Fernandez

December 3, 2018

Configuring LLDP for Cisco IP Phones on Stand Alone FortiSwitch

As you may or may not know, Fortinet makes switches and they are doing very well from a saturation perspective.…

By Manny Fernandez

December 3, 2018

Extending the FortiAnalyzer HDD

Update: 20191216 If you have deployed FortiAnalyzer (FAZ) in a VM, you will undoubtedly need to extend the hard drive…

By Manny Fernandez

December 3, 2018

Killing a Fortigate Process

The other day, while troublehsooting a customer’s firewall, I noticed a process that was eating up the CPU. CPU was…

By Manny Fernandez

December 3, 2018

Loading FortiOS via CLI

Earlier today, I received a FortiAnalyzer 1000D from a customer. This was a PoC box that was never picked up…

By Manny Fernandez

December 1, 2018

SIPCALC

Anyone that has read my blog, knows I use sipcalc on my Mac. I used to use it on my…

By Manny Fernandez

November 21, 2018

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