Fortinet Rolls Out New Unified Threat Management Appliance For Mid-Sized Customers

The objective, according to Kevin Flynn, senior product marketing manager at Fortinet, is to enable customers to “right-size” their network security, in terms of both scale and control.

“As application layer attacks proliferate, the ability to control application attacks is probably the thing that is most of great importance,” said Flynn. “In addition to blocking malware, it also controls applications. For instance, you can block Facebook for most people, but allow one class of users to use Facebook, but you're not going to let them play Farmville. So we are effective against malicious attacks, but we can also help customers make sure that corporate resources are used for the reasons intended. So there's very fine, granular application control.”

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The device combines next-generation firewall functionality, VPN capability, application control, antispam, antivirus, data leak protection, and WAN optimization. It offers 20 Gbps of firewall throughput, 6 Gbps of IPS throughput (HTTP traffic) and can support up to 7 million concurrent firewall sessions, 10,000 Client-to-Gateway IPSec VPN tunnels, and up to 3,000 concurrent SSL VPN users.

Unified management is delivered through a single pane of glass, for benefit of cost, efficiency and security.

“We like the ability to consolidate all of these technologies into a single platform,” said John Gapinski, president of Secured Retail Networks, an Irvine, California-based Fortinet partner. “We can retire four or five competing solutions by collapsing them into one device. The price points are attractive, plus we can add consulting and overall management service revenues.”

The device is offered for straight resale without per-user license fees. “This is especially important, given the trend towards BYOD,” explained Flynn. “So many users have multiple devices accessing the network, and this can really change the cost structure when you’re working with user licenses. If you had a per-user licensing, each user could bring on three devices, which would eat up those licenses pretty quickly.”

The Fortigate-800C is currently available with a U.S. list price of $9,998.