SUNNYVALE, Calif., January 25, 2005 - Fortinet - the confirmed market leader in Unified Threat Management (UTM) and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection -today announced that the company's FortiGate systems have been named a finalist for "Best Blended Security Solution" in SC Magazine's prestigious U.S. Excellence Awards. Products considered for this award category integrate multiple security solutions to protect against complex threats. Fortinet's FortiGate systems were nominated as a finalist alongside products from Cisco Systems, Internet Security Systems (ISS), McAfee, and Websense.

Finalists for SC Magazine Excellence Awards 2005 were determined by a panel of network security industry experts. Fortinet is also a finalist in SC Magazine's Global eaders Trust Awards for "Best Antivirus Solution" (see press release: http://www.fortinet.com/news/pr/2004/pr122204.html). Finalists for this category were determined by votes from users of information security products and services worldwide.

"As an industry pioneer and confirmed leader of the unified threat management market, Fortinet is pleased that both end-users and SC Magazine judges view our security products as a superior way to protect against today's more sophisticated and complex network and content threats," said Adam Stein, Fortinet's vice president of marketing. "Our FortiGate systems are in use by more than 2,000 users worldwide and offer a distinct choice of seven different best-in-class security services that have garnered wide-spread acceptance among enterprises of all sizes."

Fortinet's award winning ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems deliver real-time complete content protection through the integration of a broad range of security functions -- including antivirus, firewall, virtual private networking (VPN), intrusion detection and prevention, content filtering, traffic shaping, and anti-spam. All of Fortinet's FortiGate systems are ICSA-certified in four distinct applications areas, offer easy to manage and provide cost-effective network-level and content-level protection at the network edge. FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically through Fortinet's FortiProtect™ Network, which delivers continuous and automatic "push" updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

The SC Magazine Excellence awards, voted on by a panel of judges from the information security industry, recognize technical security excellence in key business sectors. Award winners will be announced at the SA Conference & Exhibition to be held in San Francisco on February 16, 2005.