Atmel Defeats Network Attacks With Fortinet Antivirus Firewall Platform

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - May 3, 2004 - Fortinet - the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection - today announced that Atmel Corporation, a world-leading semiconductor manufacturer, has strengthened its existing network security architecture with the addition of Fortinet’s FortiGate antivirus firewall platform as the primary layer of defense against contentbased network attacks.

Atmel chose Fortinet for improved security based on Fortinet’s Complete Content Protection™ technology, along with the high-performance delivered by Fortinet’s unique FortiASIC™ Content Processor chip. Atmel was also swayed by the FortiGate system’s greatly simplified management and low cost, and by the continuous, automatic, real-time updates provided by Fortinet’s FortiProtect™ service to ensure protection against the latest threats. Since deploying the FortiGate-800 system, Atmel’s more than 7,000 employees have been protected from the MyDoom worm and other attacks.

A Changing Threat Environment
Network attacks have becomBBsBarter Bnd more sophisticated, often disguising themselves inside Web (HTTP), email (POP3, SMTP, IMAP) and other seemingly legitimate traffic. Protecting against these attacks requires a deeper level of content
analysis that conventional firewall and antivirus solutions are not equipped to handle without crippling network performance and requiring an exorbitant amount of IT resources to manage.

“We needed an easy to manage, integrated solution that would stop content-based attacks on the network without affecting the performance of our Web traffic and delay-sensitive applications,” said Phong Ly, network security engineer for Atmel. “Fortinet was the only vendor to offer everything we needed in an integrated system with the security, performance, manageability and cost-efficiency we required.”

The Fortinet FortiGate-800 was put to the test when the MyDoom worm hit early this year. Armed with real-time antivirus signature updates from Fortinet’s FortiProtect service, the FortiGate-800 system successfully stopped the MyDoom worm before it ever entered Atmel’s corporate network or affected network performance.

In addition to the FortiGate-800 system Atmel is deploying at its headquarters in San Jose, Calif., the company has future plans to deploy Fortinet FortiGate-60 devices at its branch offices around the world.

Complete Content Protection
The FortiGate-800 system delivers antivirus, firewall, VPN, content filtering and more on a single, easy to manage and cost-effective system. The ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems are able to scan Internet traffic in real time, which includes Web browsing in addition to email and file transfers, providing customers like Atmel with complete content protection against viruses and worms at the edge of their networks without impacting network performance.

Fortinet’s FortiProtect service ensures that FortiGate users are protected against new threats in real time. Automatic “push” updates of antivirus and intrusion attack detection databases ensure that FortiGate units worldwide are updated in real time in response to new attacks, and are able to detect and prevent threats from entering customer networks, without waiting for the unit or an administrator to request an update.

“As Atmel and many other customers have realized, what was once considered a ‘best-ofbreed’ solution - consisting of disparate conventional security products -cannot effectively defeat today’s sophisticated, blended threats,” said Richard Kagan, vice president of marketing for Fortinet. “Fortinet uniquely provides the complete content protection required by enterprises of all sizes and delivers it on a single, highperformance and easy to manage platform that costs significantly less than alternative solutions.”

About Atmel
Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California with manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets worldwide, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and RF
semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system-level integration semiconductor solutions using CMOS, BiCMOS, SiGe, and high-voltage BCDMOS process technologies.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2004 Security Product of the Year Award from Network Computing Magazine and 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 e-mail and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time - without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems are the only security products that are quadruple-certified by the ICSA (antivirus, firewall, IPSec, NIDS), and deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named to the Red Herring Top 100 Private Companies, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.