SUNNYVALE, Calif, - October 8, 2007 - Fortinet® - a pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that the University of Virginia's College at Wise has upgraded its previous Fortinet security solution with Fortinet's high-end FortiGate™-5050 chassis-based security system. The high-performance unified threat management system is protecting all content traversing the campus network as well as protecting university computers located in the residence halls and computer labs.

Founded in 1954, the University of Virginia's College at Wise is recognized as one of the top public liberal arts colleges in the nation and was selected for inclusion in "Colleges of Distinction," which recognizes institutions for engaged students, great teaching, vibrant communities and successful outcomes.

Prior to its original Fortinet deployment in 2004 the University was being bombarded with viruses - a problem they needed to solve quickly. After deploying Fortinet's enterprise-class FortiGate-3600 security appliance three years ago for antivirus protection, virus outbreaks are no longer an issue for the small IT staff.

Grant Baker, security specialist at the University said, "One of the benefits of the Fortinet solution is the automatic FortiGuard antivirus subscription updates. I no longer have to worry if computers are updated with the most recent downloads - with Fortinet, I know they are."

ecently deciding to enhance its network infrastructure to include VLANs, UVa-Wise required more network bandwidth and decided to upgrade their previous Fortinet solution to Fortinet's multi-gigabit high-end FortiGate-5050 system. The University IT staff has designed a secure network infrastructure that includes a FortiGate-5050 security system at its data center located on campus and is providing antivirus, firewall and VPN protection from Internet based threats.

Part of Fortinet's FortiGate-5000 Series family of high-end multi-threat security solutions, the FortiGate-5050 modular chassis-based system and FortiGate-5001 security blades, work together to offer industry-leading scalability, performance, security and deployment flexibility. FortiGate-5000 Series systems are the only security products to comply with the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) standard and integrate a complete set of security functions and services - including firewall, antivirus, VPN, intrusion protection, Web content filtering, anti-spam, traffic shaping and IM and P2P controls - to help protect networks from sophisticated blended threats. All FortiGate systems are kept up- to- date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard subscription services.

"Fortinet's UTM systems are the only solutions on the market that can handle all security functions easily without seriously affecting throughput," said Keith Fowlkes, vice chancellor for Information Technology and CIO at the University of Virginia's College at Wise. "Other vendors claim they can do this, but Fortinet's advanced technology and customized ASICs puts them well above the other solutions on the market today."

"Universities are prime targets for viruses and worms due to the nature of their open networks and the amount of people accessing content. Fortinet is perfect for universities because of our integrated, scalable security platform that ideally meets the security, performance, and ease of use requirements for universities like UVa-Wise," said Karl Soderlund, Fortinet's vice president, Americas sales and global alliances. "We are very proud to have the University of Virginia at Wise as a repeat customer of ours, as this is a testament to Fortinet's proven track record of offering unparalleled network security."