SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 24, 2007 - Fortinet® - a pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions, today announced the completion of its largest Web content filtering deployment to date, securing more than 800,000 students and school staff at HEAnet, Ireland's National esearch and Education network. Fortinet's FortiGate™-5140 multi-threat security systems and FortiGuard™ Web Filtering and Antivirus services have been deployed in HEAnet data centers to protect 4,000 primary and secondary schools across Ireland.

Under an Irish government initiative, the country's primary and secondary schools are being provided with free broadband access and also connectivity to safe and appropriate Internet content via HEAnet. In this regard, HEAnet was tasked with finding a security solution that could deliver the protection and performance the network needed on a large scale.

After a competitive public tender and rigorous evaluation process, Fortinet's FortiGate-5140 systems were chosen for their capacity to provide strong and integrated security as well as their capability to process large throughputs of traffic while maintaining high performance. HEAnet also subscribed to Fortinet's FortiGuard Web Filtering and Antivirus services to provide their FortiGate systems with continuous and automatic updates that help ensure protection, 24/7, against the most damaging, content-based threats from Web traffic.

"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 onan Byrne, special programmes 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."

With the help of Fortinet channel partner Lan Communications, HEAnet has deployed two FortiGate-5140 chassis-based security systems with eight FortiGate™5001 blades at its Dublin-based data centers to provide Web content filtering and antivirus real-time protection to all network users. With the full project now completed, HEAnet is providing a security-rich online environment for its 800,000-user school community.

The Fortinet platform has made a positive impact on how Irish schools use the Internet on a daily basis. According to a survey conducted by HEAnet in 2006, a staggering 96 percent of schools surveyed confirmed the solution offered a safer online environment, while more than three quarters were more inclined to use the Internet following the implementation of Fortinet-powered Web filtering.

"Our Web content filtering implementation at HEAnet is unique in its scale and definitely proves the strength and robustness of our solution as well as negates the argument that integrated security cannot also provide individual best-of-breed security applications," said Andre Stewart, EMEA vice president at Fortinet. "HEAnet represents another sales milestone for us and is just another great example of the traction our FortiGate systems are getting among large enterprises, telecom operators and managed service providers."

Fortinet's family of FortiGate-5000 chassis-based systems integrate an array of essential security functions and are the industry's first and only security solutions to comply with the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) standard for next generation of carrier grade communications equipment. Mobile operators, telecommunication carriers, service providers and large enterprise customers can configure FortiGate-5000 systems in a variety of ways to offer unmatched performance, reliability, scalability and security. All FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard™ subscription services, which provide continuous updates to help protect against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

About HEAnet
HEAnet is a world-class provider of high quality Internet services to Ireland's Universities, Institutes of Technology and the research and educational community including primary and post primary schools. HEAnet uses technology that places Ireland amongst the leading countries of the world.

HEAnet plays an essential role in facilitating leading edge research involving national and international collaborations between Irish researchers and students and their colleagues across the globe. It also enables leading researchers to live in Ireland and develop their ideas here.