SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jan. 29, 2004 – Fortinet – the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection – today announced the FortiGate 3600 antivirus firewall solution for large enterprises and service providers has received SearchNetworking.com’s “Product of the Year” award in the Enterprise Firewall Systems category. The FortiGate 3600 received the Gold Award, the top honor in its category, based upon the product’s performance, ease of integration and manageability, functionality and value.

The awards were judged by a panel of industry experts, including the editors of TechTarget’s SearchNetworking.com, along with a select group of users and independent industry analysts. Judges selected the “Products of the Year” from among those products announced and shipped between September 30, 2002 and October 1, 2003. Each product was evaluated based upon its overall ability to meet the new or evolving needs in the marketplace and the degree to which it represented the best product in each respective category.

“The FortiGate 3600 drew high marks in functionality from our judges, who also found the cost of the solution to be very competitive,” said editors of SearchNetworking.com. “Based on Fortinet’s FortiASIC content processor chip, the FortiGate platform can detect and eliminate viruses, worms, and other content-based threats without reducing network performance. In addition, the FortiGate 3600 is automatically updated by the vendor’s Fortiesponse network, increasing protection against evolving threats.”

The FortiGate 3600 provides enterprises and service providers with the high performance and robust capabilities needed for mission critical, real-time network protection applications. The product’s ASIC-powered antivirus protection strips harmful, contentbased attacks – including viruses, worms and Trojans – from real-time Web traffic as well as email messages at the network edge, even from within encrypted VPN tunnels, before these threats can reach vital servers and desktops.

“To have our product receive top honors in the Enterprise Firewall category is a real accomplishment and honor for us,” said ichard Kagan, vice president of marketing for Fortinet. “This award is further proof that the industry is recognizing the demands for businesses to operate in real-time while simultaneously addressing the rapid rise of content-based threats. The only way this is possible is through high-performance network security systems such as the FortiGate 3600, which delivers complete content protection with lightning fast throughput.”

For more information or to view the award description of the FortiGate 3600, please visit http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/productsOfTheYearCategory/0,294802,sid7_tax295564,00.html.