Fortinet Launches Security Industry’s First Platform Scalable to Multi-Gigabit Antivirus Performance

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 20, 2004 – Fortinet – the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection – today set a new standard for network-based antivirus protection with the announcement of the FortiGate 4000 Antivirus Firewall. This newest member of the FortiGate family is a scalable, high-capacity chassis-based system that delivers multi-gigabit antivirus protection along with a full suite of network-level and content security functions. The FortiGate 4000 systems enable large enterprises, internet service providers (ISPs) and managed security service providers (MSSPs) to deliver complete content protection services at speeds and price/performance levels previously unobtainable using currently available computing or networking technologies.

The demands for businesses to operate in real time, and the rapid rise of content-based threats, are driving exploding demand for high-performance network security systems. Organizations are increasingly turning to virtual private networks (VPNs), Web-based applications, and other real-time communications methods in order to be more responsive to their customers, suppliers and partners. In addition, many organizations are taking advantage of cost-effective, broadband wide-area network (WAN) links, and as a result users increasingly expect network applications to execute without noticeable delay. At the same time, the growing number and severity of so-called content-based network threats, such as viruses, worms, and Trojans is straining the capabilities of conventional firewalls and software-based antivirus products: These systems lack the intelligence and the processing power necessary to screen for attacks in the network without adding unacceptable delay or cost.

The FortiGate 4000 Antivirus Firewall meets the stringent requirements for security, speed, scalability, and reliability demanded by very large enterprises and service providers. The chassis-based FortiGate 4000 system supports a range of plug-in modules that enable each system to be configured to meet customers’ specific performance and connectivity requirements. A fully configured FortiGate 4000 system can deliver 2 gigabits/second of throughput with ICSA-certified antivirus screening, 20 gigabits/second of ICSA-certified firewall throughput and 6 gigabits/second of ICS-certified IPSec VPN throughput. In addition, the FortiGate 4000 system supports all of the network and content security applications provided by the FortiOS™ operating system. This enables service providers and large enterprises to filter their highest capacity links for contentbased threats in data centers, large customer premise sites, and also within the service provider’s infrastructure.

"Delivering antivirus checking at over one gigabit per second exceeds a significant performance barrier," said Charles Kolodgy, research director, Security Products at IDC. "With the FortiGate 4000 platform, Fortinet is providing an architecture that provides a level of scalability for content security that other technologies have not yet been able to match. Large enterprises and service providers will now be able to deploy content security throughout their environments without compromising performance or incurring unacceptable costs."

Flexible, Scalable System Addresses Multiple Applications
The FortiGate 4000 system is designed for ultimate flexibility, scalability and reliability. It can be deployed as a high performance antivirus and content filtering gateway, or as a complete network protection solution leveraging firewall, VPN and intrusion detection/prevention (IDP) capabilities.

FortiGate 4000 systems are configured using a FortiGate 4000 Chassis outfitted with a combination of modules to serve varying throughput, redundancy, and interface requirements. The FortiGate 4000 Chassis accommodates redundant, hot-swappable power and fan modules to ensure high-availability power and cooling, and also supports Management Modules for in-band and out-of-band management. For scalable throughput, the FortiGate 4000 Chassis has slots to accommodate up to 10 FortiBlade 4010 Modules, each of which is equipped with the FortiASIC™ Content Processor chip, and provides high-performance firewall, VPN, antivirus, intrusion detection and prevention, Web and email content filtering and traffic shaping services.

FortiGate 4000 systems can be configured to support a wide variety of application for large enterprises and service providers, including:

• Antivirus/worm screening of broadband xDSL lines “In the Cloud”
• Screening of content threats at service provider peering points
• Complete content security services for 1000’s of hosting customers in a single chassis
• Integrated network and content security for data centers and enterprise headquarter sites

Based on the Award-Winning FortiGate Architecture
FortiGate Antivirus Firewalls are based on a groundbreaking architecture designed specifically to deliver application-layer security and content processing services, in addition to network-layer services, in real time. The FortiGate 4000 provides all of the features found in the other 11 members of the FortiGate family, including:

• ICSA Certified Firewall
• ICSA Certified IPSec VPN
• ICSA Certified Antivirus Protection
• ICSA Certified Network Intrusion Detection (NIDS)
• Intrusion Prevention
• Web Content Filtering
• Email Content Filtering

All models in the FortiGate product family employ Fortinet’s unique FortiASIC™ content processing chip and the powerful, secure, FortiOS™ operating system to achieve breakthrough price/performance. The unique, ASIC-based architecture goes beyond “deep packet inspection,” which can miss many attacks, and employs complete content protection technology to reassemble and analyze content and behavior across hundreds or thousands of packets while maintaining real-time performance. The result is a combination of services and performance that cannot be matched using conventional layer 3/layer 4 networking architectures, or by deploying software applications on conventional computer systems.

Distribution and Availability
The FortiGate 4000 will be available in Q1 2004 via Fortinet’s global network of authorized distributors and resellers.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, are the new generation of real-time network protection systems. They detect and eliminate the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time – without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems, the only security products that are quadruple-certified by the ICSA (antivirus, firewall, IPSec, NIDS), deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named to the “Visionaries” category in the 2003 Gartner Enterprise Firewall Magic Quadrant, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.