A Crazy Six Months at Fastvue. Report Speed, Safeguarding, FortiGate and More!

I'm really proud of the Fastvue team at the moment and just had to get all this off my chest...

The first half of 2019 has been a huge step forward for Fastvue.

Report Speed

We finally finished an epic project to back our Fastvue Reporter platform on Elasticsearch, insanely increasing our report speed. Now you can run reports on users, sites, anything and not waste your life away waiting for the results. Here's a really dry, terrible video of me comparing the report timings between the old and new versions:

Side note: If you're creating a log analysis product and think it's a good idea to roll your own database, just take a moment, breath and DON'T!

Safeguarding

We added Safeguarding sections to Fastvue Reporter's Internet Usage Reports making it super-simple for schools to identify students at risk of self-harm, extremism as well as generally nasty online behaviour.

This is in addition to the existing real-time alerts that send suspicious searches and website visits to safeguarding officers, teachers or principals.

Education remains our fastest growing customer segment and it's amazing to hear the success stories schools and colleges around the world are having, just by sending data from their firewall to Fastvue Reporter.

Fastvue Reporter for FortiGate

We also released our first new product in two years with Fastvue Reporter for FortiGate - now available as Beta.

The work that goes into learning the nuances in the logging behaviour of individual firewalls can never be underestimated! Our team (myself included) has gained an unhealthy, intimate knowledge of Fortinet FortiGate's extensive log event reference guide, dug out non-intuitive logging tweaks, and spent many hours developing the default filters, data aliases and lookup lists required to make reporting on this beast of a firewall as simple as possible.

If your company or school is using Fortinet FortiGate, we'd love to hear what you think! The download comes with a free 30-day trial, and we're happy to extend this for as long as we're in beta.

What's next?

We're not looking at slowing down any time soon. We'll have a new product for another major firewall released soon (hint: it may or may not share a name with a well-known Silicon Valley suburb), along with some new features that our customers have been waiting on for far too long.

What a time to be alive! :)

We're also looking for help! If you're in the firewall/web gateway space and love to write, and/or if you're a developer that can craft slick user interfaces, hit me up! We're a small, fully remote team (ditch the commute and get hours of your life back) and we value work-life balance above all else. Check out some of the skills we're looking for.

So much love goes out to the Fastvue team right now (you know who you are!), and to our customers, partners and supportive firewall vendors (you also know who you are!) across the globe that have stuck by us and helped us grow.

Thank you!