Fortinet Secures Europe's National Exhibition Centre (NEC) Against Network Attacks

LONDON, December 1, 2004 - Fortinet - the confirmed market leader in Unified Threat Management (UTM) and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection - today announced that the 200,000 square metre National Exhibition Centre (NEC) has deployed Fortinet's FortiGate network security systems. The Birmingham, UK-based NEC is the busiest European event venue with more than 250 events annually and is using the FortiGate systems to provide powerful, flexible and comprehensive security protection for email, peer-to-peer traffic and HTTP-based applications required by its constantly evolving exhibitor local area network (LAN).

A deepening concern about the increasing threat from sophisticated worms, viruses and other malicious attacks on exhibitor data traffic led The NEC to examine new ways of ensuring the ongoing integrity of its Exhibitor network, explained Communications Infrastructure Manager Michael George. "The unique nature of the Exhibition infrastructure, regularly entailing more than 2500 changes a month, called for a highly flexible and easily configurable solution with high performance and broad anti-threat capabilities. Since installing Fortinet's FortiGate-1000 systems this summer, we've been very pleased with how much easier it makes both management and end-user configuration. We have also have benefited enormously from the protection offered by a device that truly offers superior protection."

Working with UK-based network integrators Trinity Security, The NEC evaluated a number of alternative security solutions and selected Fortinet for its superior functionality, performance and usability. "The Fortinet device massively outperformed the other single point devices we looked at and we were very impressed with its combination of best-in-class VPN, anti-virus, firewall, IPS and content filtering functions," added George. "As well as its faster multi-gigabit speeds and more comprehensive security protection, we also saw major benefits with Fortinet's cost saving single-license approach and its ability to automatically issue IP addresses to new users."

"The NEC uses its Exhibitor LAN as a service provider would use its backbone, bringing unique demands that test the resilience and performance of its 21 hall exhibition floor network," said Jonathan Mepsted, Regional Director at Fortinet. "As The NEC found, the comprehensive unified threat management provided by Fortinet's FortiGate systems makes them the best solutions for safeguarding the integrity of the NEC brand as well as protecting NEC users from malicious attacks."

Fortinet's ASIC-accelerated FortiGate-1000 Antivirus Firewalls deliver real-time complete content protection without reducing network performance. A dedicated high availability port allows two FortiGate-1000 systems to be configured in redundant clusters - as they are at the NEC - for improved scalability and uptime. All FortiGate-systems are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiProtect™ Network, which provides continuous updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, and other threats.

"Helping exhibitors to derive highly secure, flexible Internet access and IP application connectivity is a core deliverable for internationally important event venues such as the NEC," commented Simon Jenner, Consultant at Trinity Security Services Ltd. "With the Fortinet solution in place, the chances of exposing exhibitors to unavailable or insecure service is significantly reduced."

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the confirmed leader of the Unified Threat Management market. The company'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.