Fortinet and Dacom Sign Strategic Alliance To Offer Integrated Security Services To Enterprises In Korea

SUNNYVALE, Calif. And HONG KONG, Feb. 10, 2004 – Fortinet – the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection – today announced it has signed a strategic partnership in Korea with fixedline carrier Dacom Corp. to jointly deliver an integrated security service. Under the pact, the two companies will market and sell Secure Box, an integrated security solution based on Fortinet’s FortiGate™ series of antivirus firewalls, to small and medium sized enterprises that utilize Dacom’s leased line services. Secure Box delivers a comprehensive security service that helps enterprises fight computer viruses, Trojans and worms, hacking attempts and other security concerns at an affordable monthly rate.

Fortinet estimates it will ship nearly 3,000 FortiGate units to Dacom in 2004 as a result of the alliance. FortiGate units will be provided for a three-year period under the agreement with Dacom, and Sysone Co., a Fortinet Korea distributor partner, will manage technical support and maintenance services.

“Dacom is focused on leading-edge, growth-oriented markets such as e-business, information security and Internet data centers. In order to develop a solid managed security service, we needed a technology partner with a security solution that our
customers would feel confident using,” says Lee Chang-woo, vice president of Dacom, who leads the company’s e-biz division. “The performance of the FortiGate systems is unmatched in the market, and the ability to deliver comprehensive security at wire speeds is absolutely critical for Internet service providers.”

The FortiGate systems that will be shipped for the Secure Box service offer eight security functions: antivirus, firewall, network intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IDP), virtual private network (VPN), content filtering, traffic shaping, and e-mail filtering. All models in the FortiGate product family employ Fortinet’s unique FortiASIC™ content processing chip and the powerful, secure, FortiOS™ operating system to achieve breakthrough price/performance.

The unique, ASIC-based architecture goes beyond “deep packet inspection,” which can miss many attacks, and employs complete content protection technology to reassemble and analyze content and behavior across hundreds or thousands of packets while maintaining real-time performance. The result is a combination of services and performance that cannot be matched using conventional layer 3/layer 4 networking architectures, or by deploying software applications on conventional computer systems.

Says Chung Man-jin, president of Sysone, “Fortinet’s integrated security solutions support automated updates, removing the burden of constant and cumbersome management from our support staff. The FortiGate systems are also very scaleable,
enabling us to quickly grow our business and add new customers without constantly having to worry about whether or not the systems can support the new workload. The Fortinet solutions are optimized for setting up security policies and handling glitches as quickly as possible when the network hosts a number of users, which is a major benefit to our customers.”

“In Korea, managed security services are gaining momentum, particularly within small to medium sized enterprises (SME’s) where IT departments are typically smaller and budgets are stretched thin,” said Richard Kagan, vice president of marketing at Fortinet. “As SME’s scale their businesses, expand operations and build out global network resources, their exposure to the growing number of Internet-borne security threats also grows. Dacom, Fortinet and Sysone have developed a security service that can eliminate damaging financial and productivity costs that result from attacks such as the most recent MyDoom outbreak.”

As an initial step, Fortinet offers the FortiGate-60 solution for Dacom’s small enterprise clients with less than 50 employees. Later in the first quarter of 2004, Dacom will expand the product offering to include the whole range of security products from Fortinet. The carrier-class FortiGate 4000 platform is scheduled to be added to the Dacom service in the second half of this year.

Dacom Corp. (www.dacom.net )
Dacom, established in 1982, is South Korea’s second-largest fixed-line carrier, specializing in data telecommunications. Dacom, a unit of LG Group, the country’s second-largest conglomerate, is in the forefront of the information technology industry by offering high-quality corporate telecommunications networks for corporate clients. The company also runs Chollian, a pioneering Internet portal, and powers corporate Internet networks in the Asia-Pacific region. Dacom set out offering 002 international telephone service in 1991 and joined the local telephony service in 1996, infusing fresh energy into the country’s rigid telecommunications market which had long been monopolized by KT Corp. Dacom is now playing a leading role in the fast-developing e-business, information security and Internet data center sectors, while setting a new standard for convergence
technologies that piece together fixed-line, mobile and broadcasting.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, are the new generation of real-time network protection systems. They detect and eliminate the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time – without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems, the only security products that are quadruple-certified by the ICSA (antivirus, firewall, IPSec, NIDS), deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named to the “Visionaries” category in the 2003 Gartner Enterprise Firewall Magic Quadrant, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.