Leading Bank in Thailand Purchases $250,000 in Fortinet Solutions

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Mar. 21, 2006 - Fortinet - the pioneer and market leader of Unified Threat Management and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based multi-threat security systems for real-time network protection - today announced that Thailand's leading agricultural bank, Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives (BAAC), has selected an array of Fortinet high-end products and subscription services to protect their nation-wide network of financial institutions.

In line with a comprehensive network security upgrade, BAAC purchased and deployed $250,000 worth of FortiGate multi-threat security systems, including: seven carrier-class FortiGate-5020 systems, nine enterprise-class FortiGate-800 systems, and one FortiManager management and monitoring system

Financial Institution Requires Superior, Manageable Multi-Threat Security
BAAC operates as a state-owned bank under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance, with the primary objective of stimulating agriculture in Thailand by extending financial services to those in the sector. The bank serves customers through approximately 700 branch locations across Thailand. BAAC's network enables branches and administrative personnel to exchange information on all aspects of agricultural policy and business, and to access information in a national database.

Following a wave of virus outbreaks, BAAC reviewed its security procedures and infrastructure and found that in addition to virus and worm outbreaks, large amounts of spam was flooding their network and causing outages at branch locations. Of paramount importance to BAAC in evaluating alternative security solutions was superior manageability, comprehensive protection against all types of threats - including viruses, intrusions, spam and Spyware - along with the ability to easily and cost-effectively scale with the bank's growth.

BAAC evaluated solutions from Fortinet, Juniper, SonicWall and WatchGuard and found that Fortinet best met all of its stringent criteria. BAAC was particularly impressed with the superior security and efficient management provided by Fortinet's FortiGate multi-threat security appliances and FortiManager management and reporting system. Additionally, the chassis-based modular architecture of Fortinet's FortiGate-5020 systems offered unmatched scalability, flexibility and performance.

"Our previous security solution - Check Point firewall software running on Sun Microsystems servers - could not defend against viruses and spam," explained Khun Wichan Ariratanawalai, director of network development for BAAC. "We found that the comprehensive security applications and services offered by Fortinet's ASIC-based appliances provided a much greater level of protection and performance."

"Additionally, with a network as widely-dispersed as ours, managing our security infrastructure can be challenging," continued Ariratanawalai. "Fortinet's integrated security appliances are efficient to manage and we no longer have to maintain numerous servers in many different locations to ensure a high standard of security."

Fortinet's market-leading FortiGate systems are ASIC-accelerated security appliances that deliver real-time network protection through the integration of a broad range of security functions -- including firewall, virtual private networking (VPN), antivirus, intrusion prevention (IPS), Web filtering, traffic shaping, and anti-spam. FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically through Fortinet's FortiGuard™ Network, which delivers continuous and automatic signature 'push' updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, intrusions and other threats around the clock, and around the world.

BAAC's Fortinet deployment was managed by Fortinet reseller partner Universal Communications Systems (UCS), and was completed in late 2005.

"The scope and size of BAAC's deployment represents one of the largest deals in the APAC region to date, and we are very pleased with it," said Hansen Chang, vice president for Asia Pacific, Fortinet. "As BAAC and other financial institutions worldwide have realized, Fortinet's integrated security systems best meet their stringent security requirements, while at the same time reducing management complexity and total cost of ownership."

About Bank for Agricutlure and Agricultural Co-operatives (www.baac.org.th)
The Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives of Thailand was established in 1966 as a government owned agricultural development bank. The mandate of the bank is to provide agricultural credit to farm households. BAAC's extensive resources and operating networks in rural areas makes it an efficient organization for providing rural credit. BAAC has evolved over forty years from a specialized agricultural lending institution to a diversified rural bank that provides a range of financial services.

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 multi-threat security systems, 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. Fortinet's solutions are the only security products that are certified seven times over by the ICSA (firewall, antivirus, IPSec, SSL, IDS, client antivirus detection and cleaning), and deliver a full range of network-level and application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms. Named a Light Reading Top 10 Private Company and #4 on Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal's "Fast 50" list, Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.