BISBANE, February 3, 2005- Fortinet - the confirmed market leader in Unified Threat Management and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection- today announced that Albert Smith Group, an international identity company, has deployed the FortiGate™-60 Antivirus Firewall platform to secure 100-plus staff in Australia and New Zealand.

Albert Smith Group, with offices across the Asia Pacific region, has produced over $170 million worth of signage in recent years, for many of the world's top brands. Lacking an appropriate security solution, the Group sought to implement a full-featured, integrated security system for their offices and factories in Australian state capital cities and New Zealand, to stop the viruses that were bypassing their existing anti-virus software solution. Albert Smith Group selected Fortinet's FortiGate Antivirus Firewalls after also evaluating products from SonicWall, WatchGuard, Juniper (NetScreen) and Netgear.

"After thorough evaluation, we selected Fortinet's FortiGate Antivirus Firewall platform for its cost-effectiveness and comprehensive protection," said Paul Woodward, IT Network Administrator. "As an integrated multi-function security platform, FortiGate gives us broad spectrum defence - including firewall, VPN, and many other security functions - at less than the cost of a single-function solution. Other antivirus firewall solutions we evaluated included per node licensing and were more expensive, with one costing up to three times more."

Virus threat eliminated
Since implementing Fortinet's FortiGate-60 Antivirus Firewall platform, Albert Smith Group has experienced a substantial improvement in security, along with demonstrable OI. The FortiGate system, continuously updated by Fortinet's FortiProtect™ Network, has successfully detected and repelled every attack since it was installed. In addition, network performance has improved because attack-related traffic, which can be significant, has been eliminated.

Woodward added: "Another major advantage for us as an SME with limited IT support is the ease of use and management of the FortiGate systems . Our Fortinet Gold Partner, Evercom Networks, helped with the implementation and their engineers essentially taught me how to use the system during the few hours it took them to set it up. Now I can manage it easily on a day-to-day basis because the GUI is so intuitive."

Evercom Networks (www.evercom.net.au)) has devised a full security strategy for Albert Smith Group, which entails future deployments of Fortinet solutions in other locations throughout the enterprise.

Ideally suited for small to medium enterprises, Fortinet's FortiGate-60 Antivirus Firewall provides complete content security solution to protect against the growing virulence of content-based threats at the network's edge, while delivering the highest possible performance. The FortiGate-60 system delivers antivirus, firewall, VPN, content filtering, intrusion detection/ prevention, anti-spam and traffic shaping on a single, easy to manage and cost-effective system. The ASIC-accelerated FortiGate systems are able to scan Internet traffic in real time, which includes Web browsing in addition to email and file transfers, giving customers total protection from today's rapidly evolving content-based threats. FortiGate platforms are kept up-to-date automatically through Fortinet's FortiProtect™ Network, which delivers continuous and automatic "push" updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

Ben Teh, regional manager at Fortinet said: "Albert Smith Group has hit upon a cost effective means of improving network security while continuing to take full advantage of the business benefits of the Internet in a safe and reliable way. We are very pleased that, by deploying Fortinet's FortiGate systems, the Group has been able to achieve the level of security they need without sacrificing performance, and with the availability and uptime needed for their 24x7x365 operation."