SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 5, 2009 - Fortinet^® - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that more than 1,000 educational institutions worldwide have deployed Fortinet's FortiGate^® multi-threat security appliances to help protect K-12 and university networks from cyber threats, filter malicious Web content and securely connect remote sites and users.

Some of the notable educational institutions with Fortinet deployments include:

• Americas: Cornell University, Clintondale Community Schools, Edmonton Public School Board, Laredo Independent School District, Ryerson University and Widener University.
• Asia Pacific: Holmesglen TAFE, I-Shou University, Meizhou Jiaying University, Showa University, Soochow University, Tamkang University, Victoria University of Wellington.
• Europe, Middle East and Africa: HEAnet, Technion, Universidad de Jaume I Castellon, UAE (United Arab Emirates) University, University of Bologna, University of Bonn and Warwickshire College.

"Fortinet has gained tremendous traction in the worldwide education market," said Anthony James, vice president of products for Fortinet. "Our FortiGate line of products is giving educational institutions the ability and confidence to meet government mandates and protect children. In addition, our FortiGuard^® services are enabling IT staffs to focus on strategic goals rather than day-to-day management of security updates and protections."

Some of the big issues driving this security demand by academic institutions are the viewing of inappropriate content by students and exposure to a potential liability; intrusions into academic record and exam data stores; utilization of campus networks for illegal content sharing; propagation of viruses, worms and other content-based threats; and complying with government regulations such as the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), a U.S. federal law addressing concerns about children's access to the Internet and other information while in schools and libraries.

While standalone security products can be used for specific tasks such as filtering content, eliminating viruses and worms, detecting network intrusions and preventing access to critical computing assets, they don't offer the greatest value. The cost of procuring and managing these multiple, independent security systems quickly exceeds IT budgets for most educational institutions. Fortinet ASIC-accelerated security appliances integrate essential security applications and services, including antivirus, firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, anti-spam and traffic shaping- firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention (IPS), VPN, Web content filtering and anti-spam - within one appliance and eliminate the need for multiple point products.

Sample Fortinet deployments in educational environments include:

Country-Wide Education Web Content Filtering: HEAnet
In 2004, the Irish government decided to extend its communications services across the country's primary and secondary school sites. With a commitment to provide free content-safe connectivity services to the nation's schools, Ireland's National Research and Education network, HEAnet, needed a security solution that could protect its national network.

"With such a large-scale project, we had stringent technical requirements and the FortiGate security systems demonstrated the resilience, scalability and capacity needed to cope with the enormity of our project," said Ronan Byrne, special programs manager at HEAnet. "Fortinet's integrated security platform and per-system licensing also allowed us to take a centralized security and management approach and thus avoid the management and licensing challenges associated with the implementation of servers and separate point solutions."

Consolidating Network Security: Victoria University
Victoria University of Wellington is one of the largest and most respected research institutions in New Zealand. Victoria University selected Fortinet's FortiGate integrated security appliances to help protect its network from spam and viruses contained in emails and to maintain Internet connectivity of complex network systems and applications.

"Key to our selection of Fortinet was the truly integrated functionality of its FortiGate security appliances," said Laurie Ellims, technical architect /security manager at Victoria University of Wellington. "In evaluating other solutions, we found that one product might have offered IPS but nothing much beyond that. Another offered a range of functions, but as a piecemeal solution from multiple vendor partners. We found that none matched the breadth of Fortinet's integrated platform."

To read more about Fortinet's success in the education market, please visit http://www.fortinet.com/solutions/education.html.