Middle East 14 May, 2007 - Fortinet® - a pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions,today announced that it has hired Bashar Bashaireh as its Middle East egional Manager. His primary responsibilities are to further establish a strong regional presence for the rapidly growing company; broaden Fortinet's network of value-add channel partners; and increase its market share in the region. Bashaireh officially joined the company earlier this month.

Patrice Perche, sales VP for South of Europe, Middle East and India at Fortinet, said: "We have seen phenomenal growth in the Middle East in the past year thanks to the work achieved by our partners, who have done an excellent job in providing support to our customers in the region. It is now time to take Fortinet to the next level of development in the Middle East, and, therefore, having dedicated resources there is important. I am convinced that Bashar, with his expertise of the region will be able to strengthen our market position and increase sales opportunities in Middle East."

Bashaireh has more than 15 years of experience in the Middle East market place, where, prior to joining Fortinet, he held the positions of egional Sales Manager at 3Com Middle East and egional Manager MENA at Cyber Guard Corporation.

Before that, Bashaireh started his career in various sales and marketing positions with business partners of Bull, IBM and HP in Jordan. He then worked for leading Systems Integrators in Saudi Arabia where he was Director of Sales at Ebttikar Technologies followed by Branch Manager at Al Faisaliah Group's Modern Electronics Establishment. Bashaireh holds a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Jordan in Amman.

In addition to building a regional presence with plans for local representation in Saudi Arabia, Bashaireh will be expanding and implementing global channel programs in the region to streamline the partner network and meet the growing demand in the Middle East region.

"The increased awareness amongst enterprise organizations in the region of the current security challenges and the need to protect their infrastructure against malicious threats and attacks represent a strong business opportunity for Fortinet," said Bashaireh. "I look forward to this exciting and challenging role with Fortinet, and I'm confident that, with the support of the Middle East team and our valued partners, I will be able to achieve our business objectives."