OSWESTY, SHOPSHIE, 14 APIL, 2004 - The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), egional Co-ordination Unit (CU) has deployed an enhanced network security solution to protect all egional Government Offices throughout the UK from virus attacks. Designed, installed and managed by Total Network Solutions, it uses Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated Antivirus Firewalls, which in the first month alone have prevented all attacks from entering the Government network including MyDoom, NetSky, Bagel and the Nachi virus.

The CU has standardised on the FortiGate-400 Antivirus Firewall for all 15 of its regional government offices, protecting 2500 users from the most damaging contentbased threats from email and web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate web content, etc. This is achieved in real time at the network edge without reducing network performance. Total Network Solutions is also providing 24-hour management of antivirus updates to upload new virus definitions as soon as a new virus has been detected in the wild. This will ensure that the solution is kept up to date and providing maximum protection against even the latest viruses.

"The sheer scalability and breadth of the FortiGate platform was a key reason for deploying the systems throughout our network," commented Chris Benefield, Senior ICT Project & Account Manager of the egional Co-ordination Unit. "The products offer total network and content protection with antivirus, intrusion detection, VPN, content filtering and anti-spam capabilities provided in a single, integrated solution."

Should a virus be introduced to the network via an infected floppy disk or laptop, the FortiGate Antivirus Firewall automatically stops it from infecting other sites on the network or being transmitted to other government departments. They also pinpoint any
infected machines on the network for isolation and cleansing. The systems include a high-availability port and fail-over logic to support redundant configurations, making them ideal for mission-critical applications and environments.