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Fortinet Introduces FortiGate 5000 Network Security Platform

Fortinet extended its FortiGate product family with the introduction of the FortiGate-5000 Series of high-performance, highly scalable Antivirus Firewalls. Designed for network, edge or core deployments in large enterprises, carriers and managed service providers (MSPs), the new FortiGate-5000 family delivers complete content protection on a flexible platform that can scale from two to 14 blades and has and the ability to cluster numerous blades in a single chassis-based system. The FortiGate-5000 Series is the industry's most scalable, multi-function security platform that allows customers to design and create remarkably secure networks. With the FortiGate-5000 chassis, Fortinet is the first security vendor to comply with the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (AdvancedTCA) industry standard, supported by Intel and numerous other companies.

Industry Standard Chassis Delivers Reliability And Flexibility; First Security Company To Comply With AdvancedTCA

The FortiGate-5000 family consists of three chassis models -- the two-slot FortiGate-5020, five-slot FortiGate-5050, and 14-slot FortiGate-5140 -- each of which are populated with FortiGate-5001 blades that provide security functions and/or FortiGate-5003 blades that provide high availability (HA) clustering functions. All FortiGate-5000 Series chassis and blades comply with the AdvancedTCA industry standard, which is a new series of specifications for the next generation of carrier grade communications equipment. These specifications, driven by over 100 companies within the PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturing Group (PICMG), incorporate the latest trends in high speed interconnect technologies, next generation processors, and improved reliability, manageability and serviceability, resulting in a new blade and chassis form factor optimized for communications.

The principle objective of AdvancedTCA has been to provide a standardized platform architecture for carrier-grade telecommunication applications, with support for carrier-grade features such as NEBS, ETSI, and 99.999 percent availability. Key features of the standard include hot-swappable blades, power supplies and fans, DC input power for battery operation, and a shelf management interface to monitor and control environmental and power parameters. The FortiGate-5000 Series is the first AdvancedTCA-based network security system on the market.

"The AdvancedTCA chassis specification provides a standardized platform architecture for carrier-grade telecommunication applications, with features carriers demand such as high availability and performance scalability," said Anthony Ambrose, general manager of Intel Modular Platform Programs at Intel. "By utilizing the AdvancedTCA specification and Intel modular building blocks, including dual low power Intel Xeon processors, Fortinet demonstrates its leadership in providing a robust network security platform that can scale to carrier-grade requirements and cost-effectively meet large enterprise requirements as well."

Industry's Highest Performance Scalability; FortiGate Blades Enable Modular Growth And Investment Protection

Customers can configure FortiGate-5000 systems to meet a wide range of throughput and reliability requirements by selecting the right combination of FortiGate blades. The FortiGate 5001 blade provides complete network security services, including Firewall, VPN, Antivirus, Intrusion Prevention, Antispam, Web Content Filtering, and Traffic Shaping, with throughput up to three Gb per second for Firewall, 600 Mb per second for 3DES IPSec VPN, 400 Mb per second for Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) and 200 Mb per second for Antivirus scanning. In addition, the FortiGate-5000 family scales from 3 Gb per second Firewall to over 42 Gb per second Firewall with the FortiGate-5140. By combining multiple security functions into an ASIC-accelerated security platform, Fortinet offers customers lower capital and operational expenditures when compared to multiple vendors' point products combined to provide the same security feature set as the FortiGate solution.

Each FortiGate-5001 blade has four Gigabit Small Form-factor pluggable (SPF) ports and four tri-speed gigabit Ethernet ports, and is equipped with the FortiASIC content processor chip which enables all FortiGate systems to deliver the industry's highest performance for combined network and content security. Multiple FortiGate-5001 blades can be installed in each FortiGate-5000 Series chassis, enabling total system throughput to scale to multigigabit levels for all services. Using FortiGate-5003 Switch blades, in the FortiGate-5050 or FortiGate-5140 chassis, multiple FortiGate-5000 security modules can be clustered to provide any desired level of redundancy; including fully redundant systems that eliminate any single point of failure at the chassis, power supply, fan, blade, and link level. For service providers, MSPs and large enterprises, the FortiGate-5000 has virtual domains and can create up to 250 Antivirus Firewalls from a single FortiGate blade. And as customers grow, their investment in FortiGate blades is fully protected as any blade can be used in any chassis.

The FortiGate Platform Protects Small Businesses To Large Enterprises

As with all models in the 14-member FortiGate family, FortiGate-5000 systems are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiProtect Network, which provides continuous updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware and other threats -- around the clock and around the world. All models in the FortiGate product family employ Fortinet's unique FortiASIC content processing chip and the powerful, secure, FortiOS operating system to achieve breakthrough price/performance. The unique, ASIC-based architecture goes beyond "deep packet inspection," which can miss many attacks, and employs complete content protection technology to reassemble and analyze content and behavior across hundreds or thousands of packets while maintaining real-time performance.

"The introduction of the FortiGate-5000 Series is significant in many ways," said Ken Xie, founder, president and CEO of Fortinet. "These scalable systems set a new high-water mark for security performance and reliability and as such will meet the stringent requirements for network-based security in carrier and large enterprise environments. In addition, the FortiGate-5000 Series is further proof of the power of the FortiGate architecture. We can now provide the same, integrated security capabilities in systems that span needs from individual telecommuters to carrier class networks. No other vendor can make this claim and we are extremely proud of this achievement."