Fortinet Technology Takes Virus Protection to New Level

New Antivirus Engine Meets ITC Orders and Renders Trend Micro Patent Claims Moot

SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 24, 2005 - Fortinet - the pioneer and market leader of Unified Threat Management and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based multi-threat security systems for real-time network protection - today announced a groundbreaking new technology that increases protection against damaging "Zero-Day" virus attacks and raises the bar on security system performance.

Fortinet's new antivirus engine is contained in the latest version of Fortinet's FortiOS v2.8 firmware, which is deployed on all FortiGate security appliances. It enhances the superior security and performance that customers have come to expect from the company's world-class antivirus functionality provided in its FortiGate multi-function security appliances. This is achieved through the implementation of a dual-pass scanning technique that adds an additional layer of security to all traffic and an object-scanning approach that significantly increases antivirus and overall system performance. A patent application for Fortinet's enhanced antivirus engine has been filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

In addition to delivering improvements in antivirus processing and security, Fortinet's new antivirus engine has been carefully designed to avoid U.S. Patent No. 5,623,600, assigned to Trend Micro (`600 Patent). The `600 Patent is the subject of an ongoing International Trade Commission (ITC) enforcement action instigated by Trend Micro. Fortinet's new antivirus engine has undergone external legal and industry expert analysis, both of which determined it did not infringe the patent claims at issue in the related Aug. 8, 2005 ITC orders.

"We took a fresh look at an old problem and challenged ourselves to better a patented technology more than a decade old," said Ken Xie, founder, president and CEO of Fortinet. "The result is innovative technology that revolutionizes antivirus security and performance within our flagship FortiGate security appliances. While we stand firmly in our position that our technology did not infringe on Trend's patent, we are following ITC orders and have already resumed business as usual."

"Hotlist" Scanning Improves Security & Zero-Day Attack Protection
Traditional antivirus approaches group files by type and scan typically only the traffic deemed threatening against a virus signature database. This approach leaves security gaps that can allow hidden threats to bypass traditional antivirus solutions. Fortinet's enhanced antivirus engine goes beyond this, employing a new dual-pass signature scanning approach by which all traffic that passes through the FortiGate systems is checked against a signature database, and then again against a "hotlist" database of the most active viruses currently in the wild. Providing this additional granularity and scanning technique delivers increased security against masquerading viruses that can morph into damaging "Zero-Day" attacks by proactively detecting and preventing viruses before they occur.

ICSA Labs Observes Performance Gain of 110%
Fortinet's enhanced antivirus engine raises the bar on antivirus content inspection and increases performance by optimizing the way traffic is processed, analyzed, buffered and stored. Whereas conventional antivirus approaches utilize significant processing power and memory to buffer and examine the content of entire email messages, Fortinet's new antivirus engine utilizes an object-oriented approach by which email content is divided into discrete sections or "objects." The objects are then scanned in parallel using multiple, simultaneous security engines, thus increasing overall system performance. This innovative object-based scanning approach, coupled with improvements in packet processing in the FortiGate devices, delivers significant performance advantages over traditional antivirus implementations.

In a recent test conducted in conjunction with ICSA Labs -- the security industry's central authority for research, intelligence, and certification testing of products - Fortinet's FortiGate-3600 systems running the new antivirus engine and other software enhancements showed a significant increase in performance over the same systems utilizing Fortinet's previous antivirus software, which was already recognized for delivering industry-leading performance. Additional testing will be presented in a report authored by ICSA, which will be publicly available in November.

"We observed Fortinet's new antivirus technology under real-world conditions - with a mix of traffic running across the FortiGate enterprise security appliances," said George P. Japak, vice president of ICSA Labs. "We observed the hotlist functionality in action, and the tests we observed demonstrated that the FortiGate systems delivered an impressive performance increase of more than 110 percent."

"We are very enthusiastic about Fortinet's new antivirus engine and already see demand for it from our customer base of all sizes," said Mike Bramm, chief technology officer of CompuNet International, a Fortinet Platinum Partner. "Fortinet's FortiGate systems continue to provide value to our customers by integrating the essential security functionality they require in an ASIC-accelerated security appliance -- we look forward to further addressing our customers' enterprise security needs with the increased performance and security functionality that Fortinet unveiled today." CompuNET International, Inc. provides secure, powerful, and intelligent information technology solutions exclusively tailored to help enterprises achieve business success. For more information on CompuNet, please visit www.compunetinc.com.

Fortinet's FortiGate systems provide the industry's broadest suite of security protections in a single platform, spanning firewall, VPN, antivirus, intrusion detection/prevention, Web filtering, antispam, antispyware and traffic shaping functionality. Deployed as an integrated or standalone solution, FortiGate systems detect and eliminate today's threats as well as emerging blended threats that cannot be detected and eliminated by competitive solutions. For more information on Fortinet products, please visit: www.fortinet.com/products.

Distribution and availability
Fortinet's antivirus enhancements are contained in Fortinet's FortiOS 2.8 MR11-D. The software is available now to existing customers free of charge as part of a routine upgrade, and is currently being deployed on all FortiGate systems shipped from Fortinet to the U.S. domestic market.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the confirmed leader of Unified Threat Management market. The company's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated multi-threat security systems, 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. Fortinet's solutions are the only security products that are certified six times over by the ICSA (server antivirus, client antivirus, firewall, IPSec, SSL, 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.