Monitoring & Responding to Server Threats with a Fortinet Firewall

I have been around since the early ‘90s when we were running networking over PSTN lines, and the biggest concern for most organizations was stable dial-up for connectivity. Fast-forward to now, and threats are faster, smarter, and continuous. Unless you’re watching and proactively dealing with threats to the second, you’re not protecting your servers.

A little note from me to you: threat actors do not sleep. They don’t take weekends off. Nor should your firewall monitoring.

And that is where you bring in Fortinet firewalls with real-time threat detection and incident response that can prevent an attack from metamorphosizing into a disaster. At PJ Networks, we use Fortinet for 24/7 threat monitoring and I’ve seen firsthand how it has saved businesses from ransomware, data breaches, and downtime that they cannot afford.

Why is Threat Monitoring so Important

Here’s the thing — most breaches aren’t happening in one split second. Attackers love persistence. They spot a hole, slip in, move side-to-side, and wait. Months, sometimes. Waiting for the moment to pounce.

And unless you are tracking your traffic and your logs in real time, you won’t even know they are there. That’s how big breaches are made — threat actors sitting quietly in the darkness and exfiltrating data slowly.

So what’s the solution?

• Network traffic, firewall log, and endpoint activity monitoring
• Automated anomaly detection to detect abnormal patterns (because monitoring manually is not enough)
• Real-time incident response — because time to act often determines whether an attack will be thwarted or result in a full data breach

I still remember handling the Slammer worm in the early 2000s. It propagated rapidly, damaged unpatched systems within minutes, and flooded the network traffic. If only we’d had today’s network monitoring tools back then? It would have been a different story.

If all you still do is a “check logs once a day” approach — you’ve already lost the fight.

Fortinet’s Security Fabric & AI-powered Threat Detection

Now, let’s talk Fortinet. The Security Fabric is one of the more reliable systems out there. They drive fast, automated threat detection by linking firewalls, endpoints, and cloud security tools into one unified framework.

That means:

• As-it-happens, artificial intelligence (AI) powered surveillance — catching threats before they grow
• Sandboxing capabilities — to safely test suspicious files
• Zero trust integration — the critical piece for protecting modern infrastructures

I’ll be honest, I’ve been cynical about anything AI-powered in cybersecurity. Too much marketing. Not enough actual protection. But Fortinet actually does AI in a reasonably clever way — like using machine learning to spot traffic anomalies in your network without turning your firewall into some ridiculously overcomplicated “black box” that nobody can understand.

Quick take: Fortinet marrying automation to human oversight is precisely how threat detection should operate.

Real-Time Incident Response

Detection is only so good — but it doesn’t matter if you don’t respond immediately.

A Fortinet firewall is useful for more than stopping an attack. It is actively preventing threats before they can spread. Here’s how:

• Automatically block IPs on detected malicious activity
• Network containment — isolating infected devices from a breach
• Logging & forensics for forensic analysis

We had a case lately where one of the banks we work with was hit with an attempted credential stuffing attack. “They flag the high volume of failed logons that could’ve gone unnoticed by a human reading logs hours later” when trading logs are aggregated in a system, said the researcher. Within seconds the automated response kicked in – The source IPs were blocked, and no compromise was made.

And here’s the important part: If your response is going to take minutes instead of seconds, then you are already late.

24/7 Threat Monitoring | PJ Networks

We install firewalls but we don’t just leave it like that at PJ Networks. We give 24/7 Fortinet monitoring through a dedicated security team that responds in real time if something seems pretty suspicious.

Ignore your IT team too—come on, they have enough to do as is. And threat actors? They don’t have to wait for office hours.

What that means for you:

• Constant traffic monitoring — parse threats before a breach
• Immediate intervention — we minimize risk as soon as it arises
• Tailored Fortinet solutions, working for your business

Enterprise or small business, it makes no difference. If your servers are online, they’re a target. And if you don’t have any real-time monitoring in place… well, then you’re kind of just hoping for the best.

Hoping is not a cybersecurity strategy.

Conclusion

I have been in this world long enough to witness changes to the cyber threat landscape.

In the earliest days, we worried about floppy disk viruses and misconfigured modems. Now we have ransomware-as-a-service, AI-generated phishing attacks, and botnets that can take down an entire infrastructure within minutes.

Real-time threat detection and an instant response is the demand of the era of advanced threats. Fortinet has the tools — but it’s on you to make them work right.

• Monitoring isn’t optional
• Threat actors don’t sleep
• In attacks, every second counts in the response

If you are not already leveraging 24/7 security monitoring, time to re-evaluate your strategy. Before you become the next object lesson.