Skip to main content

Integrate with FortiMail

Support level: Community

What is FortiMail​

FortiMail is a secure email gateway from Fortinet that provides protection against phishing, spam, malware, and data loss for on-premises or cloud-hosted email environments.

-- https://www.fortinet.com/products/email-security

Preparation​

The following placeholders are used in this guide:

  • authentik.company is the FQDN of the authentik installation.
  • fortimailadmin.company is the FQDN (or IP) of your FortiMail admin interface.
  • fortimailuser.company is the WAN-facing FQDN of your FortiMail user/webmail portal.
info

This documentation lists only the settings that you need to change from their default values. Changing settings not mentioned in this guide can prevent single sign-on from working correctly.

info

FortiMail 7.6.4 and later, allows you to configure separate service providers for the admin and user/webmail portals. If you plan to use the user/webmail portal, avoid importing FortiMail’s auto-generated metadata directly, as you will need to edit the ACS URL in that XML to replace the host with your user-facing FQDN.

authentik configuration​

To support the integration of the FortiMail Admin Portal with authentik, you need to create an application/provider pair in authentik.

Create an application and provider in authentik​

  1. Log in to authentik as an administrator and open the authentik Admin interface.

  2. Navigate to Applications > Applications and click Create with Provider to create an application and provider pair. (Alternatively you can first create a provider separately, then create the application and connect it with the provider.)

    • Application: provide a descriptive name (e.g. FortiMail Admin), an optional group for the type of application, the policy engine mode, and optional UI settings. Take note of the slug as it will be required later.
    • Choose a Provider type: select SAML Provider as the provider type.
    • Configure the Provider: provide a name (or accept the auto-provided name), the authorization flow to use for this provider, and the following required configurations.
      • Set the ACS URL to https://fortimailadmin.company/sso/SAML2/POST.
      • Set the Issuer to https://fortimailadmin.company/sp.
      • Set the Service Provider Binding to Post.
      • Under Advanced protocol settings:
        • Select any available certificate as the Signing Certificate and enable Sign Assertions.
        • Ensure that authentik default SAML Mapping: Username is selected as a Selected User Property Mappings; other mappings are optional and can be removed if not needed.
    • Configure Bindings (optional): create a binding (policy, group, or user) to control which administrators see the FortiMail Admin application on the My Applications page.

  3. Click Submit to save the application and provider.

Download metadata file​

  1. Log in to authentik as an administrator and open the authentik Admin interface.
  2. Navigate to Applications > Providers and click on the name of the provider that you created in the previous section (e.g. Provider for FortiMail Admin).
  3. Under Related objects > Metadata, click on Download. This downloaded file is your metadata file and it will be required in the next section.

FortiMail configuration​

  1. Sign in to the FortiMail admin interface.
  2. Navigate to System > Single Sign On and select the Setting tab.
  3. Enable Single sign-on and note the values that FortiMail displays (the ACS field is read-only):
    • Entity ID: https://fortimailadmin.company/sp
    • Assertion consumer service (ACS) URL: https://fortimailadmin.company/sso/SAML2/POST

Ensure that these values match those configured in authentik. If not, update the values in authentik and re-download the authentik metadata file.

  1. Upload the authentik SAML metadata file you downloaded in the previous step.
  2. Switch to the Profile tab and configure the attribute mapping:
    • Set Attribute used to identify email address to http://schemas.goauthentik.io/2021/02/saml/username.
User Provisioning

FortiMail does not auto-provision administrator accounts via SSO.

You must manually create admin users and, for each account, configure the Authentication type as Single Sign On to enable authentication through the SAML provider.

Enforce SSO-only access (optional)​

To require SSO for FortiMail Admin Portal logins:

  1. Sign in to the FortiMail admin interface.
  2. Navigate to System > Customization > Appearance > Webmail Portal and set Login page to Single Sign On only.

Configuration verification​

  1. Open a new browser session (or private window) and navigate to the relevant FortiMail portal (admin or user).
  2. Initiate the SSO login flow (this happens automatically if you enabled the SSO-only options) and confirm that you are redirected to authentik for authentication. Sign in with an account permitted to use that portal.
  3. After successful authentication, verify that you return to the FortiMail portal without being prompted for additional credentials.