SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 3, 2008 - Fortinet^® - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced a new monthly report that summarizes key threat trends, replacing its Top 10 most-reported malware report. This inaugural "Threatscape" report begins a more comprehensive analysis of the threat landscape for October and evaluates nefarious online activities by category, including exploits/vulnerabilities, malware, spam and blocked Web traffic. In a nutshell for October: malware was very high, scary and targeted Japan and the U.S.; spam was significantly down as percentage of total email; exploits were on the rise and very aggressive; and pornography represented the highest Web threat traffic.

The Fortinet FortiGuard^® Global Security Research team compiled the following statistics and trends for October based on data collected from FortiGate^® network security appliances and intelligence systems in production worldwide:

• Exploits/Intrusion - Of the 18 active exploits, 14 were considered in the high- or critical-risk categories;
• Malware - Rogue security applications (AKA "scareware") remained the top malware category for the month, with overall volume continuing the steep climb observed from April (10 million) to September (30 million); Japan (38.6%), the U.S. (32.9%) and China (25.1%) were the top three regional recipients of malware volume this month;
• Spam - October showed a precipitous and uncharacteristic decline in the percentage of email tagged as spam, with the period October 8 thru 20 showing a 10-percent drop;
• Web traffic - Pornography topped the list of Web threat sites that were blocked, followed by malware, spyware and phishing sites.

"The digital underground is such a complex and evolving landscape that we felt customers and others relying on our research would benefit from gaining deeper knowledge and analysis," said Derek Manky, security researcher for Fortinet. "With this inaugural edition of the 'Threatscape' report, our goal is to both broaden and deepen the threat content and offer customers, consumers, researchers and others more information to better mitigate their own online risks."

Customers who use Fortinet's FortiGuard Subscription Services should already be protected against the threats outlined in this report.

To read the full October Threatscape report which includes the top threat rankings in each category, please visit: http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/reports/roundup_oct_2008.html. For ongoing threat research, bookmark the FortiGuard Center (http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/) or add it to your RSS feed by going to http://www.fortinet.com/FortiGuardCenter/rss/index.html. To learn more about FortiGuard Subscription Services, visit http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortiguard.html.

FortiGuard Subscription Services offer broad security solutions including antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web content filtering and anti-spam capabilities. These services help enable protection against threats on both application and network layers. FortiGuard Services are updated by the FortiGuard Global Security Research Team, which enables Fortinet to deliver a combination of multi-layered security intelligence and zero-day protection from new and emerging threats. For products with a subscription to FortiGuard, these updates are delivered to all FortiGate^®, FortiMail™ and FortiClient™ products.