Large Technology Incubator Benefits from Fortinet's Virtualized Security Solutions

SUNNYVALE, Calif, - Jan 14, 2008 - Fortinet® - a pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that the Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc. (FITCI), a technology incubator for Maryland entrepreneurs, has deployed Fortinet's UTM security and management appliances to help improve network performance and provide an array of virtualized security services to business customers.

The FITCI incubator provides a low-cost environment for start-ups to share resources including office space, research and development labs, shared printers, Internet connectivity and network management. Recently growing to house more than 30 companies in its two buildings, FITCI needed to expand its network infrastructure to help protect the proprietary data of the companies it serves. To achieve this, FITCI sought to utilize virtualization to partition its network security for each individual company without overtaxing network performance.

"As an incubator, we have a shared services environment but that doesn't mean that we want everything, such as intellectual property, between our customers shared. It was therefore critical that we have a solution to securely partition each customer's network but still allow for shared resources such as printers and Internet access," said Mike Dailey, executive director of Frederick Innovative Technology Center. "Fortinet's FortiGate systems enabled us to achieve this by virtualizing network security, which also helped free-up network bandwidth and increase our network performance."

FITCI turned to its trusted network consultant and Fortinet partner MTBW Services for help in finding a scalable unified threat management solution that provided virtualization capabilities as well as traffic optimization and comprehensive security functionality delivered in an integrated appliance. After careful review, FITCI decided to replace its 3Com/Tipping Point intrusion prevention system (IPS) and D-Link firewall solutions with Fortinet's FortiGate-100A and FortiGate-200A multi-threat security appliance. The FortiGate appliances help provide FITCI and its business customers with broad security functionality -- including firewall, IPS, antivirus, Web content filtering, anti-spam and virtual private networking (VPN) -- as well as virtual domains and traffic shaping.

"FITCI's requirements were extensive and it needed a solution that would provide its 30 different clients universal protection at the Internet gateway, specific security policies based on each clients needs at the VLAN demarcations and separation of traffic, while still offering access to the shared IT resources provided by the Incubator," commented Greg Baharoff, president of MTBW Services. "Coupled with that complexity and power was the requirement that the solution be user friendly and easy to manage. The Fortinet solution was the obvious choice."

Fortinet's unique approach to virtualization, leveraging virtual domains (VDOMs), provides enterprises, MSSPs and carriers a high-performance platform for manageability of multiple domains and networks from a single device with domain-specific administrative profiles; scalability for providing the performance to support thousands of virtual networks without impacting overall network throughput, specific users or applications; and the modularity that can only be achieved with a broad security suite.

A FortiGate™-100A appliance is deployed at Hood College in Frederick, Md., and a FortiGate-200A is located at a nearby office park. Both appliances are being used to provide security protection via virtual domains to the 30 businesses. Although the networks are partitioned, the Fortinet appliances allow FITCI's IT staff to enable the companies to share resources such as the Internet and printers. A FortiAnalyzer™-100 has also been deployed to monitor the FortiGate systems. Since deploying FortiAnalyzer, FITCI can now provide its customers with individualized and detailed reports on network usage and attempted attacks - something that was previously not available. In addition, FortiAnalyzer allows the FITCI IT team to drill down specifically to isolate an organization or individual as needed.

FITCI has also subscribed to Fortinet's FortiGuard subscription services for antivirus, intrusion prevention, anti-spam and Web content filtering, which helps ensure protection against the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, other unwanted network traffic and more. Updates are automatically distributed to the Fortinet network, removing the burden of FITCI's IT staff from manually updating signatures to the networks of its customers.

"Being able to create virtual domains and virtualize security functions is becoming increasingly important to our customers as they build out their networks," said Karl Soderlund, vice president of Americas sales and global alliances for Fortinet. "Fortinet is the only unified threat management vendor that allows for up to eight network security functionalities to be virtualized therefore giving our customers protection when partitioning their networks."

About MTBW Services (www.mtbw.com)
MTBW Services was founded to provide any organization the expertise necessary to implement secure productivity enhancing technology. MTBW has been providing their services to the Washington Metro area since the 1980's. MTBW's clientele range from SMBs to Fortune 500 businesses. The MTBW mission is to allow any organization the ability to realize the advantages of Information Technology, without unauthorized personnel gaining access to that company's proprietary data. MTBW Services is based in Frederick County, Maryland.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection--including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and anti-spam -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified in six programs by ICSA Labs: (Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec, SSL, Network IPS, and Anti-Spyware). Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.