SUNNYVALE, Calif., December 28, 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 -is pleased to announce its Founder, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Vice President of Engineering and President of Fortinet Canada, Michael Xie, was named a Top Technology Innovator for 2004 by VABusiness magazine. Citing Xie's engineering innovation in network security technology, this honor recognizes Fortinet's commitment to provide real-time, cost-effective security to protect customers' networks and mission critical applications and data around the globe.

With this honor, Xie is recognized for being instrumental in bringing to market Fortinet's industry-leading network security solution portfolio, which includes the introduction of more than 25 new products since 2002. This year, Xie led the development team to design a new version of Fortinet's operating system, FortiOS 2.8. This cutting edge firmware, which is currently shipping with Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate systems, includes more than 50 new technology enhancements, most notably the addition of Dynamic Threat Prevention, which offers powerful new features such as spyware protection and combines intrusion detection/prevention (IDP) with antivirus and firewall functions in an integrated network security platform.

By uniting antivirus, stateful firewalling, IDP, VPN, Web filtering, anti-spam, spyware detection and prevention and traffic shaping into one appliance, Fortinet allows threat information to be shared and coordinated between each security component, delivering customers increased content protection against today's constantly evolving network threats.

"It is an honor for me and for Fortinet to be recognized by VABusiness and the channel partner community as a top technology leader in network security."said Xie. "As network threats continue to become more sophisticated, complete content protection is critical to secure customers' networks and I am extremely proud of my team for bringing to market an integrated network security platform for over 2,000 customers to date, with more than 80,000 FortiGate systems shipped around the world."

Xie, with more than 10 years of experience in the network security area, currently oversees all development, engineering and support for Fortinet's products, which include the company's ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems, FortiOS operating system, and management and reporting systems. Under his guidance, Fortinet has successfully introduced over two dozen products since 2002, helping catapult Fortinet to lead the Unified Threat Management market, defined by IDC.

Xie holds multiple U.S. patents in the computer and network security area and has an M.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Manitoba as well as B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University in China.