Westcon announced today that it has added Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate systems to its product portfolio. Fortinet is the only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based anti-virus firewall systems for real time network protection. Fortinet's FortiGate product won "Firewall Product of the Year" at the 2003 Networking Industry Awards.
Westcon, which has been proactively educating its solution providers about the increased threats and liabilities corporations and their networks face in an age of complex government legislation and malicious viral attacks, will distribute the full range of Fortinet's highly differentiated FortiGate solutions that integrate into a single, dedicated platform several security services such as antivirus, firewall, VPN, intrusion detection/prevention, Web and email content filtering, and traffic shaping.
Anthony Daley, vice president and general manager of Westcon Group North America, Inc., commented: "Our VARs are seeing a steady increase in security sales as companies and government agencies are coming to terms with the fact that they can be exposed to litigation or network threats if they don't proactively secure their entire network. Fortinet's FortiGate platforms provide premium content security solutions that are easy to install and maintain, exactly what our VARs are looking for. And since the FortiGate Antivirus Firewalls are the only systems that can scan email and Web traffic for viruses and worms in real time, we expect very strong demand from our extensive VAR customer base."
FortiGate antivirus firewalls are based on a groundbreaking architecture designed specifically to deliver application-layer security and content processing services in addition to network-layer services in real time. All models in the 10-member 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 analyzes content and behavior in real time, and delivers a combination of services and performance that cannot be matched using conventional layer 3/layer 4 networking architectures or by deploying software applications on conventional computer systems.
"We are delighted to have Westcon join our portfolio of partners as a major North America distributor," said Christophe Culine, Fortinet's vice president for the Americas. "They are well respected and known as experts in networking and security technology, building tight relationships with key resellers, offering an unsurpassed breadth of services and technical support. We expect that Westcon will play a key role in enabling Fortinet to continue our rapid expansion in the market."
Mark Bordelon, President of Secure Data solutions, Inc., a Texas-based solution provider, stated: "We are very pleased Fortinet has chosen Westcon to distribute the FortiGate product line. Westcon understands that customers need to defend their networks against multi-layered threats, and has articulated the resulting opportunity like no other distributor. Until now, however, there has not been one solution that has attempted to cover all threats. The FortiGate systems do this better than any other system on the market."
In June, Gartner recognized Fortinet as a visionary company that is defining the new generation of network protection systems: "Fortinet has demonstrated its investment in powerful network processing technology by filtering viruses on the fly, something that takes an unprecedented level of packet assembly and filtering to accomplish," said Gartner analyst Richard Stiennon.
Westcon (now Westcon-Comstor) is a channel provider of networking technology and a division of the global Westcon Group, Inc. The Company offers products and services for connectivity, remote access, Internet and e-business, IP telephony, virtual private networks, videoconferencing, wireless connectivity and network security.
Fortinet's award-winning FortiGate series of ASIC-accelerated antivirus firewalls, winner of the 2003 Networking Industry Awards Firewall Product of the Year, are the new generation of real-time network protection systems. They detect and eliminate the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, inappropriate Web content and more in real time - without degrading network performance. FortiGate systems also deliver a full range of network-level services - including firewall, VPN and traffic shaping - in addition application-level services in integrated, easily managed platforms.