World’s Leading Berry Supplier Upgrades Security With Fortinet’s FortiGate Antivirus Firewall Platforms

SUNNYVALE, Calif., April 14, 2004 – Fortinet – the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection – today announced that the company’s FortiGate™ family of antivirus firewalls is securely
connecting the offices of Driscoll Strawberry Associates (Driscoll’s)-- a leading, global supplier of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Driscoll’s evaluated several solutions, including technologies from NetScreen and Check Point Software, and ultimately decided on Fortinet’s FortiGate-400 enterprise antivirus firewall platform to secure its headquarters in Watsonville, Calif. in combination with FortiGate-50 units for its five domestic distribution sites. Driscoll’s decision to utilize Fortinet’s FortiGate-400 and FortiGate-50 units was based on the extensive capabilities provided within a single platform, their ability to deliver first-rate performance, and their demonstrable return on investment and lowest cost of ownership.

As with most enterprises, the Internet is critical to Driscoll’s business. The company relies on high-speed connectivity to receive and process orders and to communicate with a wide range of customers online. Driscoll’s IT staff needed to upgrade their networks to support a growing customer base, as well as an increasing number of remote locations. Additionally, they were experiencing a greater number of content-based attacks on their network that were dragging down overall network performance.

Driscoll’s had three choices for addressing this challenge: They could invest in adding capabilities to their outdated Cisco PIX firewall system, deploy a collection of new, disparate products – firewall, intrusion detection system, etc. – to address each security need, or find an integrated security solution from a single technology provider capable of meeting all of Driscoll’s security needs while delivering high-performance at a reasonable cost. After extensive evaluation, Driscoll’s turned to Fortinet’s ASICaccelerated FortiGate Antivirus Firewalls for its solution.

“We absolutely rely on the ability to digitally connect with our remote facilities and customers for the very success of our company, and thus require a very safe network on which to conduct business in real time,” said John Williams, Network Manager for Driscoll’s. “From a performance, ease-of-management and feature set perspective, there was no way we could have chosen another security solution that did so much so well for the same cost.”

Driscoll’shas already experienced demonstrable ROI from its Fortinet implementation. The company has seen a reduction in the number of content-based threats impacting its network. Previously, the company estimated the number of content threats they had to address was anywhere from 30-40 a day. The FortiGate units have cut that number drastically. And by stopping the spread of viruses and worms before they could penetrate the corporate LAN, Driscoll’s network and Internet performance also improved roughly 20 percent. Additionally, the company has experienced reduced IT costs owing to the ease-of-management and deployment of the FortiGate products. By providing a host of capabilities in a single platform, Fortinet’s FortiGate systems require far less IT resources than managing six or eight diverse technologies to deliver comparable functionality.

Williams continued, “I sleep better at night knowing that all of my network and web traffic is being scanned for malware, viruses and Trojans before they ever get in the front door, and problems are prevented before they ever hit our mail servers. This may seem like a small thing to some people, but to an IT person dealing with today’s threat environment, this is huge.”

As security attacks increasingly use high-speed networks to spread, performance has become the most important feature of any security product that analyzes real-time network traffic. Fortinet’s award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated
Antivirus Firewalls detect and eliminate the most damaging and dangerous content-based threats at the network edges without degrading network performance. The products’ ASIC-powered antivirus protection strips harmful, content-based 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.

The FortiGate family of network-based antivirus firewall systems is kept up to date with the latest antivirus attack and intrusion protection signature databases by Fortinet’s FortiProtect Network. The FortiProtect Network provides around the clock, automatic, instantaneous updates to FortiGate units worldwide – ensuring that Driscoll’s and all other customers have the most up-to-date security available.

“Driscoll’s is a leader in their market, and like all market leaders they increasingly rely on fast, secure network connectivity to stay ahead of their competition,” said Richard Kagan, vice president of marketing at Fortinet. “We’re extremely pleased that after
extensive evaluation, Driscoll found that Fortinet’s ASIC-accelerated ForitGate Antivirus Firewalls are the only systems available that meet all the security requirements of conducting online business, at high speed, and with the lowest total costs.”

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 Chunghwa Customer Win Release - 4
“Visionaries” category in the 2003 Gartner Enterprise Firewall Magic Quadrant, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.