Long Beach Transit Puts The Brakes On Network Security Threats With Fortinet's FortiGate™-300 Antivirus Firewall Platform

Sunnyvale, Calif., June 1, 2004 - Fortinet - the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection - today announced that Long Beach Transit, a Southern California-based ground transportation company, has deployed the FortiGate™-300 Antivirus Firewall platform as its primary defense against content-based network attacks. Fortinet's FortiGate security solution effectively stopped the recent Sasser worm from ever reaching Long Beach Transit's network infrastructure, ensuring 100 percent network uptime and keeping the City's public transportation running on schedule. Through the implementation of Fortinet's FortiGate platforms, Long Beach Transit has significantly reduced IT costs, and anticipates an even greater return on investment when it migrates additional security functions, including content filtering and its Virtual Private Network (VPN), to the platform later this year.

Through the operation of more than 35 bus lines in the Southern California city of Long Beach and its surrounding communities, Long Beach Transit is responsible for managing the delivery of public transportation services to more than 27 million people annually. Relying heavily on its information technology network to continuously provide its patrons with on-time, reliable service, the organization's network houses a wide array of applications that are central to Long Beach Transit's business, including global positioning for vehicle location and driver communication systems. Additionally more than 250 employees are spread across multiple sites, requiring a strong security platform capable of protecting remote locations.

Increased Protection; Decreased Costs
Since implementing Fortinet's FortiGate-300 Antivirus Firewall platform, Long Beach Transit has experienced demonstrable ROI and greater security. The FortiGate system, continuously updated by the FortiProtect™ Network, has successfully detected and repelled every content-based attack, including the Sasser worm, since it was installed. In addition, network performance has also improved because attack-related traffic, which can be significant, has been eliminated. Long Beach Transit has also been able to reallocate IT resources that had previously been dedicated to dealing with the ramifications of content-based threats that often wreck havoc on an organization's network and IT staff.

"We became infected with the Bagel virus, and that was our breaking point," said Mark Giorgis, network administrator at Long Beach Transit. "We knew we needed to improve our network security to better protect us from attacks and also to reduce the amount of time and resources we were using to respond and clean up afterwards. We evaluated a number of security solutions and selected Fortinet's FortiGate-300 system for the complete content protection it provides, combined with easy configuration, simple management and highly competitive price point."

Learning From Experience
When Long Beach Transit's network became infected by the Bagel virus in early 2004, the ramifications were extensive and resulted in major IT headaches. The virus infected the organization's Microsoft Exchange Mail Server. The IT team spent countless man hours removing the malicious code from servers and fixing individual desktops that had become infected. Additionally, the attack put so much pressure on the company's e-mail filtering application it was unable to function. This allowed a host of undesirable content to enter users' mail boxes.

"When the Sasser outbreak hit this time around, we didn't even know about it until we read in the press about all the businesses that had experienced extensive damage from the worm," added Giorgis. "The FortiGate units have lived up to their promise."

Fortinet's FortiGate-300 Antivirus Firewall is a complete content security solution that protects against the growing virulence of content-based threats at the network's edge, while delivering the highest possible performance. The FortiGate-300 system delivers enterprise-class antivirus, firewall, VPN, content filtering and intrusion detection/ prevention on a single, easy to manage and cost-effective system. The ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems are able to scan Internet traffic in real time, which includes Web browsing in addition to email and file transfers, providing customers like Long Beach Transit with total protection from today's rapidly evolving content-based threats. FortiGate platforms are kept up to date automatically through Fortinet's FortiProtect™ Network, which delivers continuous and automatic "push" updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

"The challenges facing Long Beach Transit are representative of those facing millions of organizations around the world," said Richard Kagan, vice president of marketing at Fortinet. "Content-based threats can have a crippling impact on businesses, and conventional solutions are simply not able to deal with them. However - as Long Beach Transit discovered - by using Fortinet's FortiGate platforms, businesses can eliminate the problems associated with these attacks without compromising the performance of their networks or their IT budget."

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate™ series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2004 Security Product of the Year Award from Network Computing Magazine and 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 e-mail and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time - without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems are the only security products that are quadruple-certified by the ICSA (antivirus, firewall, IPSec, NIDS), and deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named to the Red Herring Top 100 Private Companies, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.