Fortinet Fortifies Chung Hua University's Infrastructure with FortiGate™-4000 Anti-Virus Firewalls

SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 26, 2004 - Fortinet - the only provider of ASIC-powered, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection – today announced that Chung Hua University, a leading university in Taiwan, has chosen Fortinet's FortiGate-4000 platform to secure its campus-wide network population that supports more than 10,000 students and academic staff.

As an educational institution, Chung Hua University operates its network like many universities providing an "open community" to enable easy information access and exchange. However, with the growing number and complexity of internal and external attacks, Chung Hua realized the importance of protecting critical resources, such as student research, academic records, and faculty data, while still allowing access to appropriate resources. To address this need while preserving network reliability and performance, Chung Hua University deployed the Fortinet FortiGate-4000 antivirus firewall system.

The recent spate of viruses and worm attacks has re-focused attention on network and host security with renewed urgency. Thus, the University had wanted to protect against Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, where the loss of service within its network service would have meant temporary loss of all network connectivity and services across the various departments. Chung Hua University turned to Fortinet to provide a new security solution.

The newly deployed FortiGate-4000 antivirus firewalls provide the basis for Chung Hua's new high-performance network security infrastructure. The FortiGate-4000 system is a high-capacity, high-availability system designed to support environments that require very high levels of performance and reliability. The FortiGate-4000 chassis supports up to 10 FortiGate blades that provide scalable capacity and enable customers to grow as their needs change. With the improved security infrastructure in place, the University can now protect users and data from even the most sophisticated content-based worms, viruses and other malware, as well as network-based Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

"It was imperative for us to select a network security vendor that would integrate seamlessly with our present network to offer us a robust, cost-effective and reliable solution that we know we can count on. The FortiGate-4000 platform offered us unparalleled security with route- and policy-based controls, Denial of Service (DoS) and application protection and malicious content-based scanning, and with the performance necessary to handle our many broadband connections," said Michael Jiang, Network Supervisor of Chung Hua University Computer Centre.

Chung Hua University had evaluated vendor solutions and selected Fortinet's FortiGate solutions for their impressive and broad range of functions, including anti-virus, firewall, virtual private networking (VPN), intrusion prevention, and intrusion detection, content-filtering, making for a superior all-in-one solution'. Chung Hua's Michael Jiang also cited other key factors that made Fortinet the best choice, including the company's unified management interface which made the system very easy to install and maintain and contributed to the FortiGate-4000 system's cost of ownership advantages compared to other systems.

F. Matthew Young III, Vice President and General Manager, Fortinet Asia Pacific said: "The FortiGate architecture was designed specifically to meet the demanding needs for security, flexibility and performance that are common among leading universities and large enterprises. With the FortiGate-4000 system, Chung Hua University can enjoy the benefits of a secure, high performance firewall with minimum management overheads."

About Chung Hua University (http://www.cc.chu.edu.tw)
Chung Hua University, one of the youngest and most rapidly growing schools in Taiwan, was founded in August, 1990. The school employs a young faculty with excellent teaching and research skills. The school campus also shares teaching and research resources with neighboring schools and research institutes such as Chiao Tung University, Ching Hua University, Hsinchu Normal College, and Industrial Technology Research Institute. Chung-Hua manages teaching and research in 22 undergraduate, 11 masters and 2 doctoral programs, all of which are equipped with proficient faculties and the latest facilities. The university is also home to one of Hsinchu's best digitized campuses.

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.