Sydney, Australia, 25 January, 2005 - Fortinet - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -today announced that Macquarie University, a well known technology university in Australia, has chosen Fortinet's FortiGate™-500 system to replace its existing UNIX-based firewall.

Macquarie University had evaluated firewall solutions from different vendors based on several criteria, which included price, performance, manageability and hardware specifications. The Fortinet FortiGate-500 system was chosen because of its superior high-speed anti-virus and network security capabilities, its ease-of-use, licensing scheme, and quality support provided by Avante, a Fortinet reseller.

"We now have about 3000 students and 600 computers that access the Internet through the perimeter firewall," said Eddie Irvine, Macquarie University's ICS IT Manager. "We have been fully protected from W32.Sasser worm or all others attacks. While we like to think this is due to good management on our part, I'm sure that having an antivirus firewall at our network gateway has helped us out."

. F. Matthew Young III, Fortinet's vice president and general manager, Asia-Pacific said: "Educational institutions have a high-reliance on the Internet, but can be a breeding ground and target for hacker attacks, and therefore require strong protection against network and content-based threats. Fortinet's FortiGate solutions are well-suited for these environments, providing high-performance security and protection against network and content-based threats. We are pleased that Macquarie University has selected Fortinet's FortiGate systems and has had a pleasant experience with our product."