Fortinet Collaborates with Polycom to Enable Secure Multi-site Voice and Video-over IP (V²oIP)

LAS VEGAS/Interop - Booth #2449 -- May 2, 2005 - 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 expanded its presence in the Voice and Video-over-Internet Protocol (V²oIP) market with the announcement of new firmware in its FortiGate™ systems that enables secure and real-time VoIP and V²oIP. Fortinet has worked with leading unified collaborative communications (UCC) provider Polycom to successfully deploy Fortinet's FortiGate systems to enable secure, single and multi-point V²oIP conference calls with Polycom s PathNavigator, demonstrating the interoperability and seamless integration between Polycom's voice and video technology and Fortinet's network security appliances.

Fortinet will be demonstrating this technology, and discussing the intersection of broadcast over IP networks' security needs at this year's Interop 2005 conference, in Las Vegas, in Fortinet's booth #2449. This demonstration will display how Fortinet protects customers' video, data and voice traffic against common real-time traffic security concerns including: registration hijacking, impersonating a server, tampering with message bodies, tearing down sessions and denial of service (DOS).

"As a leading UCC provider, it is imperative we ensure our customers' voice and video conference calls are not only of excellent sound and video quality, but also secure given today's Internet threat climate, where networks are always exposed to the latest threats unless properly protected," said Ed Ellett, senior vice president and general manager of the Video Systems Division at Polycom. "Securing our customers' V²oIP conference calls is a top priority for Polycom and we are excited that our work with Fortinet has enabled secure, real-time UCC calls for our customers through the interoperability and seamless integration of FortiGate systems with PathNavigator."

Simplified V²oIP dialing through IP network security is a major enabler of high-quality, converged voice/data applications. Synergy Research Group forecasts the total IP telephony market value will increase to $4.4 billion in 2006 at a yearly rate of 50.5 percent¹. However, VoIP and V²oIP networks are often unprotected because security technology has lacked the intelligence to recognize and properly process the signaling protocols that enable IP-based calls to be established and managed. With its new firmware upgrade, Fortinet's FortiGate systems lower customers' capital and operational costs using their existing products while providing the application-level intelligence and ASIC-accelerated performance for secure VoIP, V²oIP and other mixed voice/data applications, without degrading network performance.

Fortinet's FortiGate systems enable secure enterprise-to-enterprise video conferencing by integrating with vendors', such as Polycom's, video conferencing technology to enable traffic to flow seamlessly over the Internet and through the firewall via H.323 Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal technology. The challenge of H.323 is its need for special translation as it passes through a firewall. Fortinet's firewalls, within its FortiGate systems, enable NAT translation to allow for high-quality communication while passing through the firewall. Another advantage of the FortiGate systems for video conferencing is that the security they provide is transparent to end users in that they do not have to make any changes to their video systems to take advantage of Fortinet's new H.323 firewall NAT traversal feature set.

"Fortinet is committed to working with innovative companies like Polycom to eliminate the barriers between security and IP conferencing and collaboration applications," said Ken Xie, founder, president and CEO of Fortinet. "As these new advanced applications are increasingly deployed, security should constantly be part of the intelligent extended enterprise. Fortinet's ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems are uniquely designed to enable secure VoIP and Voice and Video-over-IP applications, without slowing down network performance."

For more information about Fortinet's FortiGate systems, please visit: http://www.fortinet.com/products

Distribution and availability
Support for the H.323 protocol within Fortinet's FortiGate systems is available immediately.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the confirmed leader of 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.

¹ Source: Synergy Research Group's report on Enterprise Voice over IP for the third quarter of 2002.