Fortinet
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| Fortinet | |
| Type of Company | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California + over 25 Fortinet offices worldwide |
| Key people | Founder and CEO: Ken Xie |
| Industry | Information |
| Products | Firewalls, Antivirus, Intrusion Prevention, Censorware with Common Criteria EAL4+ certification, 8 ICSA security certifications, NSS certified (IPS, UTM) |
| Revenue | 100M+ & cash flow positive (2005) |
| Employees | 650+ (Q2 2006) |
| Slogan | Real Time Network Protection. |
| Website | www.fortinet.com |
Fortinet is a private company that is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that specializes in network security appliances.
Its main product is a range of enterprise security appliances sold under the brand name of "FortiGate." The FortiGate family of security appliances are ASIC-accelerated, security hardened and has integrated network-based firewall, AntiVirus, intrusion prevention, VPN (IPSec and SSL), web filtering, antispam and other security features. The company is considered a leader in the Unified Threat Management (UTM) security appliance market; the "FortiGate" series of ASIC-accelerated multi-threat security appliances won the 2004 Security Product of the Year Award from Network Computing magazine and the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, and has been reviewed by PC Magazine [1].
Fortinet also delivers four primary security subscription services under the "FortiGuard" brand. These include antivirus, intrusion prevention, anti-spam and content-control software. The latter is used mainly to block access to undesirable web sites such as pornography, gambling, and other illegal or unwanted content. According to the OpenNet Initiative [2], FortiGuard is used by the dictatorship of Myanmar to block communications critical of the regime carried over the internet, a system known as the Myanmar Wide Web [3]. Fortinet has promised to investigate the allegations, and the implied violation of US Government sanctions against the regime, noting that the software may have been sold to the regime by a third party [4]; meanwhile, the Myanmar government features its adoption of the Fortinet firewall on its official website [5].
In 2005, the gpl-violations.org project claimed to have uncovered evidence that Fortinet had used GPL code in its products against the terms of the license, and used cryptographic tools to conceal the violation. The violation was alleged to have occurred in the FortiOS system, which the gpl-violations.org project said contained elements of the linux kernel. In response, a Munich court granted a temporary injunction against the company, preventing it from selling products until they were in compliance with the necessary license terms [6]; Fortinet later settled out of court [7].
Fortinet has raised $100 million in five rounds of venture capital investment from Acorn Campus, DEFTA Partners, DCM-Doll Capital Management, Fortunetech Partners, LLC., Forval Creative Inc., Meritech Capital Partners and Redpoint Ventures.
