SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec. 8, 2009 - Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT) - a leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that Walla! Communications, LTD (TASE: WALA), Israel's leading news and Internet portal, is using Fortinet FortiMail™ appliances to help block unwanted spam and viruses from the inboxes of its 2.5 million email customers who use http://mail.walla.com. Walla! is also using Fortinet's FortiGate multi-threat security product line to protect its core network after replacing similar solutions from Check Point.

Walla!'s SMTP traffic supports roughly 30 million emails a day and its in-house anti-spam solution was proving to be no longer capable of providing an accurate, easy and scalable way to protect the inboxes of its large customer base. Walla! realized the need for a carrier-grade solution that could grow with its increasing user base. After testing multiple products, Walla! selected Fortinet's FortiMail solution based on Fortinet's performance results and lowest number of false positives.

FortiMail-2000A appliances are located at Walla!'s data center in Tel Aviv to protect the email of its active user base of 2.5 million a month. "Fortinet's ASIC-based appliances allow us to have extremely high bandwidth without having to worry about network degradation," said Sharon Weiss, CTO at Walla! Communications. "Our customers also appreciate the Fortinet solution because they're getting the emails they want and don't have to worry about extreme amounts of spam hitting their in-boxes."

"Internet portals and email providers such as Walla! need to have a scalable and accurate way of providing millions of customers with fast, reliable content. Not being able to block spam for millions of users causes not only customer headaches, but can clog providers' networks," said Patrice Perche, Vice President, international sales and support for Fortinet. "FortiMail's advanced inspection capabilities and anti-spam filtering functions improve protection against sophisticated email-based threats which allows Walla! to focus on their core competency rather than bandwidth problems due to an over zealous amount of spam traversing its network."

In addition to the FortiMail appliances protecting customer's email accounts, another FortiMail appliance is being used for Walla!'s internal network email protection. Walla! also relies on two FortiGate®-3016 multi-threat security appliances in high availability mode to protect the local area network and the corporate Website, replacing similar solutions from Check Point. The Fortinet appliances are providing firewall, antivirus, anti-spam and intrusion prevention protection.

To analyze data traversing its large and distributed network, Walla! is using Fortinet's FortiAnalyzer™-1000B analysis appliance. The FortiAnalyzer family of logging, analyzing and reporting appliances securely aggregate log data from Fortinet devices and other syslog-compatible devices. FortiAnalyzer also provides advanced security management functions such as quarantined file archiving, event correlation, vulnerability assessments, traffic analysis, and archiving of email, Web access, instant messaging and file transfer content.