SUNNYVALE, Calif. - October 20, 2009 - Fortinet® - a market-leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced a new FortiGate® multi-threat security appliance designed to meet high-end requirements of the mid-enterprise customer segment. The new FortiGate-1240B appliance offers best-in-class 40 Gbps firewall and 16 Gbps IPSec VPN throughputs, which represent a 400- and 800-percent performance advantage, respectively, over the nearest competitor*. The FortiGate-1240B platform continues the technology excellence formula introduced on the other two members of Fortinet's mid-enterprise family - the FortiGate-310B and FortiGate-620B - by also providing the highest port density and best price/performance ratio among products in its class*. The three products make up Fortinet's complete range of multi-threat security appliances for the mid-enterprise.

Fortinet is also announcing new and improved functionalities for its FortiOS™ 4.0 operating system with a new maintenance release (FortiOS 4.0 M1), which powers all FortiGate devices. Among the dozens of enhancements in this new release, FortiOS 4.0 M1 will add antivirus scanning and UL filtering for IPv6 traffic, optimized log data to reduce network storage consumption by 50 percent, policy-based granular endpoint control for FortiClient™- capable endpoints, and enhanced data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities.

Mid-sized enterprises have the same fundamental security challenges as high-end enterprise organizations, including higher network throughput, increased port density to enable greater network segmentation, and sophisticated security control. This allows customers to segment dozens of LANs within their larger network, each with its own set of security policies and performance requirements. The combination of these attributes is integrated into a single FortiGate-1240B multi-threat security appliance, which now has even greater functionality due to the new FortiOS 4.0 M1 enhancements.

"Our product strategy is to deliver the highest benefit that technology has to offer at the best possible performance and price, whether for networks of several hundred or several thousand," said Michael Xie, CTO and co-founder, Fortinet. "Cybercriminals target small and mid-sized enterprises just as they do the largest, so we've applied the same high-technology philosophy to our mid-enterprise products as we have our highest enterprise products, which give customers the most effective line of defense for their individual networks."

Underscoring a Successful Strategy
Similar to the first two members of the Fortinet mid-enterprise family, the new FortiGate-1240B appliance gives customers the security, performance and flexibility that were previously only available to high-enterprise customers at a fraction of the cost. Among similar products in the high-end mid-enterprise segment, the FortiGate-1240B product shows orders of magnitude advantage in firewall/IPSec performance, achieved through high port density that is accelerated with Fortinet's newest generation of network (NP4) and content (CP6) FortiASIC™ processors.

The FortiGate-1240B appliance offers the following leadership metrics when compared with other multi-threat security appliances in its class:

• Highest firewall/IPSec performance with 40 Gbps and 16 Gbps performance, respectively;
• Highest Gigabit Ethernet port density at 40 GbE ports, 38 of which are ASIC-accelerated; closest competitor offers 10 total ports;
• Firewall inspection of up to 2 million concurrent sessions, nearly doubling that of competitors;
• Six storage module slots enabling up to 384 gigabytes of storage, more than doubling storage capacity of competitive products; ideal for new services included in FortiOS 4.0 such as WAN optimization or storing reporting data for compliance purposes.

With enhancements to FortiOS 4.0, FortiGate-1240B customers will also see the following new functionalities:

• IPv6 support: Adds support for antivirus scanning and UL filtering of IPv6 traffic. Many security vendors are still lagging in supporting the new IP protocol, which is being adopted first by the federal segment in the U.S., the carrier segment globally, as well as for core networking in Japan.
• Log Optimization/eduction: Log optimization reduces the amount of information generated by up to 50 percent, effectively reducing by half the amount of information transmitted across the network, as well as the amount required to be stored and maintained for security analysis and assisting with policy compliance.
• Endpoint Network Access Control (NAC): As part of the FortiGuard® subscription service, a FortiGate platform can monitor the applications being installed on FortiClient-managed endpoints. FortiGate can block access to users that run or install violating applications, ensuring policy compliance against unauthorized applications.
• Improvements in Data Loss Prevention: Improved ability to detect data loss where international character sets are used.

Product Availability
The FortiGate-1240B and FortiOS 4.0 M1 are both available now. Fortinet is providing FortiOS 4.0 M1 as a no-cost upgrade to customers with valid maintenance contracts.

Additional information on the FortiGate-1240B can be found at http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortigate/1240B.html. Details about new enhancements to FortiOS 4.0 M1 are available at http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortiOS.

*Based on publicly available data