Fortinet
 | This article about a technological corporation or company is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
 | |
| Company type | Public (Nasdaq: FTNT) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Network security & Computer security |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California + over 25 Fortinet offices worldwide |
Key people | Founder and CEO: Ken Xie Founder and CTO: Michael Xie CFO: Ken Goldman |
| Products | Unified threat management (UTM), Firewalls, Antivirus, Intrusion-prevention system, Antispyware, Antispam, VPN, Virtualization, Wireless (WLAN) Security, Application Control, Web filtering, Content-control software -- all with Common Criteria EAL4+ certification, 7 ICSA security certifications, NSS certified (UTM) |
Number of employees | 1,400+ (Q1 2011) |
| Website | www.fortinet.com |
Fortinet is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and specializes in network security appliances. Fortinet’s flagship product line is sold under the brand name of FortiGate.
Corporate Overview
Fortinet was founded in 2000 by Ken Xie, the founder and former president and CEO of NetScreen (later sold to Juniper for more than $3.5 billion) and is a publicly-held company (in NASDAQ under the ticker symbol FTNT) Fortinet's position as the revenue leader in Unified Threat Management (UTM) has been validated by IDC several times over.
The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with customer support, development and sales facilities throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Fortinet sells its systems and subscription service products through a network of 1,500 channel partners worldwide.
Fortinet is an international company, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Fortinet distributes its systems and subscription based services using the Channel partner sales method. Fortinet also has relationships with various manufacturers, consulting firms, service providers, and integrators, but the extent and type of these relationships is unknown. Some examples of companies having a relationship with Fortinet are: Alcatel-Lucent, HP ProCurve, ArcSight, Citrix Systems, Unisys, Orange Business Services, Riverbed, AlterPoint and LogLogic.
Funding
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.
Fortinet is publicly traded on Nasdaq under the symbol FTNT as of Nov. 18, 2009.
Product Overview
 | This section contains content that is written like an advertisement. (November 2010) |
Fortinet offers security gateways and products that are a blend of ASIC-accelerated performance, integrated multi-threat protection, and constantly-updated, in-depth threat intelligence. This delivers network, content, and application security for enterprises, managed service providers, and telecommunications carriers, while reducing total cost of ownership and providing a flexible, scalable path for expansion. The company offers the following product lines:
- FortiGate multi-threat security appliances
- FortiMail messaging security appliances
- FortiWeb web application firewall
- FortiDB database security appliance
- FortiClient endpoint security suite
- FortiWifi wireless security appliances
- FortiAP thin client access point
- FortiAnalyzer centralized reporting
- FortiManager centralized management
- FortiScan vulnerability management
Patents
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has awarded Fortinet eight patents for networking inventions. The patents are part of the intellectual property Fortinet acquired from CoSine Communications, Inc., in May 2006. The patents strengthen Fortinet's intellectual property portfolio, and provide the company with ownership of key innovations that address critical management, storage, measurement and network performance needs of the enterprise and managed service provider markets. Fortinet now holds 40 patents and has more than 100 pending patent applications.
Security Research
Fortinet also delivers four primary security subscription services under the "FortiGuard" brand. These include Antivirus, intrusion-prevention system, Antispam, VPN and content-control software.
Other information
Fortinet contributes to the security community through its Global Security Research Team. An example of this is Fortinet’s membership in the Microsoft Virus Information Alliance (VIA) [1]. Fortinet in recent years has led to the discovery of several critical vulnerabilities in commonly used software [2].
According to the OpenNet Initiative [3][citation needed], 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 [4]. 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 [5]; meanwhile, the Myanmar government features its adoption of the Fortinet firewall on its official website [6] with other photos showing a Fortinet sales director presenting a gift to the Myanmar Prime Minister during a ceremony [7]. In 2005, after becoming aware that its product may have reached Myanmar, Fortinet conducted an exhaustive review of channel partners and their compliance with import/export controls. The company implemented additional back-end controls which now render a product useless if it is diverted without appropriate authorizations to a party located in a U.S. sanctioned country [8].
In 2005, the gpl-violations.org project 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 [9]; Fortinet was required to make the source-code to GPL portions of their FortiOS freely available in compliance with GPL licensing [10].