One consequence of any technology is that, over time, systems become less expensive and easier to use. This wasn’t so evident in the telecom field until the divestiture of AT&T (News - Alert), whereupon things began to evolve rapidly. Now, even in the new world of convergence, startups continue to appear and young, growing vendors strive to bring “big system features” and good support to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) on a tight budget.

 

One example of this is the network security company Fortinet (www.fortinet.com) of Sunnyvale California, founded in 2000 by Ken Xie, the founder and former President and CEO of NetScreen (which was ultimately sold to Juniper for more than $3.5 billion). Fortinet has pioneered multi-threat security systems and services that now protect the networks of more than 20,000 customers worldwide, including the biggest carriers, service providers and enterprises of all sizes. They have customer support, development and sales facilities throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Fortinet sells its systems and subscription service products through a network of channel partners worldwide.

 

At a recent industry show, Yours Truly took a look at Fortinet’s FortiGate Antivirus Firewalls. They’re dedicated, hardware-based units that provide real-time network protection services against viruses, worms and other content-based threats that infiltrate the network edge. One reason the system is so cost-effective and runs so efficiently is the fact that the system’s functionality derives from a custom chip – namely, Fortinet’s FortiASIC Content Processor (News - Alert) chip. FortiGate equipment can wear many hats: integrated firewall, content filtering, VPN, intrusion detection and prevention, and traffic shaping functions.

 

Fortinet’s entry level system in the FortiGate 5000 series is the FortiGate-5020. They’re configured using a FortiGate-5020 AdvancedTCA (News - Alert) form factor chassis outfitted with one or two FortiASIC chip-powered FortiGate-5001 blades, depending on your company’s throughput, redundancy and interface requirements. Each blade module has 4 Gigbit speed Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) ports and 4 tri-speed Gigabit Ethernet ports. The FortiGate 5020 backplane interconnect provides hardwired high availability for active-active and active-passive failover configurations.

 

Fortinet prides itself on offering a complete Unified Threat Management (UTM) set of features, including a content inspection firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, web filtering, antispam, antivirus, Instant Messaging (IM) controls and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) controls. The underlying FortiOS is ICSA-certified for antivirus, firewall, IPsecVPN and intrusion detection. These security technologies work in concert to prevent blended attacks from affecting assets protected by the FortiGate system. The FortiGate-5020 software is automatically updated via the FortiProtect Network, which supplies continuous, “push” updates of anti-malware software.

 

There are two other chassis designs in the FortiGate-5000 Series: The 5-slot FortiGate-5050 and the 14-slot FortiGate-5140.