SEOUL, Korea, March 14, 2006- Fortinet - the pioneer and market leader of Unified Threat Management and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based multi-threat security systems for real-time network protection- today announced that Asan Medical Center (AMC) has purchased and deployed five units of Fortinet's FortiGate-300 Unified Threat Management platforms for its five regional hospitals in Jeongeup, Boseong, Boryeong, Yeongdeok and Hongcheon in South Korea.

All AMC hospitals are operated by the Asan Foundation, which provides primary healthcare to communities in South Korea. The Asan Foundation, after an extensive review of network security at its hospitals, found that though the AMC headquarters facility was well-protected by a sophisticated and effective security infrastructure, the regional hospitals were not adequately protected against current threats. It was decided that each regional hospital needed multi-layered security to protect against the increasing frequency and complexity of viruses, worms, Trojans and other malicious software. AMC undertook an evaluation of available security solutions on the market, and eventually purchased Fortinet's FortiGate-300 Unified Threat Management (UTM) platforms to form the backbone of the new security infrastructure at its regional hospitals

AMC's main concerns were comprehensive protection against a range of threats, intrusion detection and prevention, and spam management. Their focus was on finding a solution that was cost-effective, and because the solution would be deployed in remote locations, it needed to have integrated security functions, and be easily managed and updated with the latest threat signatures. AMC had also decided on a three-layer security model, so the solution needed to provide additional gateway antivirus and traffic control features, in addition to software with equivalent functions already running on user desktops and notebooks.

The purchase of five units of FortiGate-300 for the five regional hospitals, and their deployment was completed in January 2006. Since the deployment, the volume of spam messages has dropped 70%, while spam traffic on the network has dropped 98%. Antivirus, firewall, Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDS/IPS), traffic shaping, content filtering and spam filtering functions were turned on for every one of the FortiGate-300 systems deployed.

"The system is highly cost-effective in terms of functionality and efficiency and provides unmatched security," said Mr. Wooho Kyeong, Manager of IT Team at AMC. "We were impressed by the wide range of security features and we found, in particular, that the FortiGuard™ Distribution Network was particularly effective in dealing with viruses and spam. Our regional hospitals now have the degree of stability and availability in their computer networks that is needed in the important medical work that they do."

FortiGate-300 systems provide performance, flexibility, and security necessary to protect enterprise networks. Four user-definable network ports can be assigned to provide redundant WAN links, high availability, and multi-zone capabilities, allowing administrators to segment their network into zones and create policies to control network traffic between zones. The FortiGate-300 is kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard Distribution Network, which provides continuous updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

"In South Korea, we are seeing an increasing number of hospitals considering the introduction of IT systems like EM (Electronic Medical ecords), OCS (Order Communication Systems) and PACS (Picture Archiving Communication System). As a result, the importance of network security, to protect these data and information assets, will likewise increase," said Hansen Chang, Vice President of Fortinet Asia-Pacific, "Confidentiality and integrity of patient data in hospitals will need to be maintained, and we foresee a growing demand for our products in the months and years ahead."