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SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 14, 2004 – Fortinet
– the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus
firewall systems for real-time network protection – today
announced that the company’s FortiGate™ family of
antivirus firewalls is securely
connecting the offices of Driscoll Strawberry Associates (Driscoll’s)--
a leading, global supplier of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries,
and blueberries. Driscoll’s evaluated several solutions,
including technologies from NetScreen and Check Point Software,
and ultimately decided on Fortinet’s FortiGate-400 enterprise
antivirus firewall platform to secure its headquarters in
Watsonville, Calif. in combination with FortiGate-50 units
for its five domestic distribution sites. Driscoll’s
decision to utilize Fortinet’s FortiGate-400 and FortiGate-50
units was based on the extensive capabilities provided within
a single platform, their ability to deliver first-rate performance,
and their demonstrable return on investment and lowest cost
of ownership.
As with most enterprises, the Internet is critical to Driscoll’s
business. The company relies on high-speed connectivity to
receive and process orders and to communicate with a wide
range of customers online. Driscoll’s IT staff needed
to upgrade their networks to support a growing customer base,
as well as an increasing number of remote locations. Additionally,
they were experiencing a greater number of content-based attacks
on their network that were dragging down overall network performance.
Driscoll’s had three choices for addressing this challenge:
They could invest in adding capabilities to their outdated
Cisco PIX firewall system, deploy a collection of new, disparate
products – firewall, intrusion detection system, etc.
– to address each security need, or find an integrated
security solution from a single technology provider capable
of meeting all of Driscoll’s security needs while delivering
high-performance at a reasonable cost. After extensive evaluation,
Driscoll’s turned to Fortinet’s ASICaccelerated
FortiGate Antivirus Firewalls for its solution.
“We absolutely rely on the ability to digitally connect
with our remote facilities and customers for the very success
of our company, and thus require a very safe network on which
to conduct business in real time,” said John Williams,
Network Manager for Driscoll’s. “From a performance,
ease-of-management and feature set perspective, there was
no way we could have chosen another security solution that
did so much so well for the same cost.”
Driscoll’shas already experienced demonstrable ROI from
its Fortinet implementation. The company has seen a reduction
in the number of content-based threats impacting its network.
Previously, the company estimated the number of content threats
they had to address was anywhere from 30-40 a day. The FortiGate
units have cut that number drastically. And by stopping the
spread of viruses and worms before they could penetrate the
corporate LAN, Driscoll’s network and Internet performance
also improved roughly 20 percent. Additionally, the company
has experienced reduced IT costs owing to the ease-of-management
and deployment of the FortiGate products. By providing a host
of capabilities in a single platform, Fortinet’s FortiGate
systems require far less IT resources than managing six or
eight diverse technologies to deliver comparable functionality.
Williams continued, “I sleep better at night knowing
that all of my network and web traffic is being scanned for
malware, viruses and Trojans before they ever get in the front
door, and problems are prevented before they ever hit our
mail servers. This may seem like a small thing to some people,
but to an IT person dealing with today’s threat environment,
this is huge.”
As security attacks increasingly use high-speed networks
to spread, performance has become the most important feature
of any security product that analyzes real-time network traffic.
Fortinet’s award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated
Antivirus Firewalls detect and eliminate the most damaging
and dangerous content-based threats at the network edges without
degrading network performance. The products’ ASIC-powered
antivirus protection strips harmful, content-based attacks
– including viruses, worms and Trojans – from real-time
Web traffic as well as email messages at the network edge,
even from within encrypted VPN tunnels, before these threats
can reach vital servers and desktops.
The FortiGate family of network-based antivirus firewall
systems is kept up to date with the latest antivirus attack
and intrusion protection signature databases by Fortinet’s
FortiProtect Network. The FortiProtect Network provides around
the clock, automatic, instantaneous updates to FortiGate units
worldwide – ensuring that Driscoll’s and all other
customers have the most up-to-date security available.
“Driscoll’s is a leader in their market, and like
all market leaders they increasingly rely on fast, secure
network connectivity to stay ahead of their competition,”
said Richard Kagan, vice president of marketing at Fortinet.
“We’re extremely pleased that after
extensive evaluation, Driscoll found that Fortinet’s
ASIC-accelerated ForitGate Antivirus Firewalls are the only
systems available that meet all the security requirements
of conducting online business, at high speed, and with the
lowest total costs.”
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 Chunghwa Customer Win Release - 4
“Visionaries” category in the 2003 Gartner Enterprise
Firewall Magic Quadrant, Fortinet is privately held and based
in Sunnyvale, California.
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