Considering the situation where the administrator is unable to access the FortiGate VM using its

public IP address and no traffic is reaching the FortiGate's external interface, the administrator

should check:

D. Check the inbound network security group rules.

Network Security Group Rules: AWS uses security groups as a virtual firewall that controls inbound

and outbound traffic to AWS resources such as EC2 instances. If the FortiGate VM’s public interface is

not receiving HTTPS or SSH traffic, it's likely because the inbound security group rules associated with

that interface are not allowing access on the necessary ports (HTTPS - port 443, SSH - port 22).

Troubleshooting: The administrator should verify that the security group rules for the FortiGate VM’s

network interface allow inbound traffic on the specific ports used for management access. If these

rules are absent or misconfigured, the intended traffic will be blocked, resulting in the inability to

connect.

Reference: The role of security groups in network traffic management is a core concept in AWS and is

outlined in AWS documentation. Checking security group rules is a standard troubleshooting step

when dealing with connectivity issues to AWS resources.