SYDNEY, Australia, March 22, 2006 - Fortinet - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that ick Damelian Pty Ltd, Australia's leading multi-award winning automobile group, has purchased and deployed FortiGate™ Unified Threat Management (UTM) systems from Fortinet to protect and manage its headquarters and showrooms in Sydney.

The ick Damelian Group was established in November 1978 by ick Damelian, and obert Damelian. ick Damelian Pty Ltd represents well-known luxury and sports marques, such as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Jaguar, among others. The company is also Australia's largest retailer of Honda, Alfa omeo, Citroën, Lotus and enault vehicles.

ick Damelian Pty Ltd needed a replacement for its aging security infrastructure, which could no longer be supported by current software and systems, and was already inadequate for the company's present security requirements.

The IT team at ick Damelian Pty Ltd, determined that they needed a cost-effective solution that provided basic security features, such as firewall, Virtual Private Networking (VPN) and gateway anti-virus capabilities, as well as certain critical features that their previous solution lacked, such as visibility into security incidents and network traffic. The team evaluated solutions from several vendors, including Cisco and CheckPoint, before eventually deciding on Fortinet because of integrated security features, superior manageability and ease of use.

ick Damelian Pty Ltd purchased two FortiGate-300 UTM systems, which were deployed in a High-Availability (HA) configuration at the head office, and two additional FortiGate-50 UTM devices were purchased for secure access from the homes of the company's directors. The entire infrastructure is managed by Seccom Networks, a Fortinet partner.

Since the implementation of the new Fortinet solution, virus incidents at the company have virtually stopped. Engineers at ick Damelian have also observed that, over the Christmas holidays in 2005, a spike in the number of intrusion attempts was successfully repelled by the FortiGate-300 systems.

"We have three layers of defense against viruses, but nothing has got through our FortiGate systems in 18 months," explained Mr. Gregory Steele, IT Manager at ick Damelian Pty Ltd. "We were also impressed with the performance -- Fortinet's purpose built ASIC processor was able to handle the load better than Cisco or other firewalls."

The FortiGate-300 Antivirus Firewall provides performance, flexibility, and security necessary to protect enterprise networks. The FortiGate-300A platform features two 10/100/1000 tri-speed Ethernet ports for networks running at or upgrading to gigabit speeds. 4 user-definable 10/100 ports can be assigned to provide redundant WAN links, high availability, and multi-zone capabilities, allowing administrators to segment their network into zones and create policies to control network traffic between zones. The FortiGate-300A is kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiProtect Network, which provides continuous updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, and other threats - around the clock, and around the world.

"Network security is about more than just defending data assets. A lot of the time, it is also about protecting the company's reputation," said Mr Hansen Chang, Vice President of Fortinet Asia-Pacific. "ick Demalian's choice of Fortinet and Seccom Networks to protect the data and reputation of Australia's premier auto dealership is a significant endorsement of our technology."