Fortinet

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Fortinet, Inc.

logo
legal form Inc.
ISIN US34959E1091
founding 2000
Seat Sunnyvale (California)
management CEO: Ken Xie

CTO: Michael Xie

Number of employees 4,665
sales $ 1.28 billion
Branch Information security
Website www.fortinet.com
Status: 2016

Fortinet is a US multinational company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The company develops and sells software, appliances and services in the field of information security , for example firewalls, anti-virus programs, intrusion detection and endpoint security . It is the fourth largest network security company by revenue .

Fortinet was founded in 2000 by brothers Ken and Michael Xie. In 2004 funding of $ 93 million was raised; ten FortiGate appliances were introduced in the same year. It was at this point that the patent litigation between Fortinet and Trend Micro began . The company went public in 2009 and raised $ 156 million in its initial listing. In the 2000s, Fortinet diversified its product range and added products for wireless access points, sandboxing and messaging security to its offerings.

Company history

Early years

Fortinet was founded in 2000 by the brothers Ken and Michael Xie in Sunnyvale, California. The founders previously held leading positions at NetScreen and ServGate. The company was initially called Appligation Inc., was renamed Appsecure in December 2000 and was later named Fortinet, which is derived from the English expression "Fortified Networks" (about: fortified networks). Two years were spent on research and development before the first product hit the market in 2002.

Fortinet raised $ 13 million through private funding from 2000 to early 2003. An additional $ 30 million was funded in August 2003, followed by $ 50 million in March 2004, bringing the total to $ 93 million in funding. According to Fortinet, the company's sales increased tenfold from 2002 to 2003. The company's first channel program was launched in October 2003. Westcon Canada began selling FortiGate products in December 2003; in February 2004 Norwood Adam followed in Great Britain. The reseller program was restructured in January 2006 and named "SOC in a BOX". In 2004 Fortinet already had offices in Asia , Europe and North America .

In October 2005, an OpenNet study found that Fortinet appliances were being used for Internet censorship in Myanmar . Fortinet said that its products are sold through out-of-company resellers and that the company respects US embargoes; however, photographs emerged showing a Fortinet sales representative with the Burmese prime minister.

Litigation

A German Linux programmer from gpl-violations.org obtained an injunction against the British subsidiary of Fortinet in April 2015. The company has been accused of using encryption to hide the use of Linux kernels , which are subject to the General Public License (GPL). The license conditions require disclosure of the source code. The following month, Fortinet agreed to provide the source code for the GPL-licensed elements upon request, modified its own license terms and made other changes, which resolved the conflict.

In May 2004, Trend Micro filed a complaint against Fortinet alleging that its antivirus technology infringed Trend Micro's patent rights for methods of scanning email and Internet traffic. In August of the same year, the International Trade Commission ruled against Fortinet and prohibited the sale of the affected products. Fortinet felt that Trend Micro's patents were too broad, but the company accepted the judgment. Fortinet and Trend Micro reached an agreement in January 2006, the contents of which were not disclosed, and Fortinet modified its antivirus products so as not to infringe Trend Micro's patents.

Years later, in another case, a lawyer from the International Trade Commission expressed the opinion that Trend Micro's patents in question were invalid. The United States Patent Office revoked the patents in December 2010 following a new filing from Fortinet.

In December 2013, Fortinet sued Sophos , accusing it of poaching Fortinet employees and infringing Fortinet patents. The dispute was settled two years later through arbitration; the terms were not disclosed.

Further development

In 2008, Fortinet researchers stated that a Zango Facebook widget tricked more than three million users into downloading malicious spyware under the guise of revealing their secret admirers to users. Zango rejected the allegations because their software required express approval.

In 2008, Fortinet acquired the database security and auditing intellectual property rights from IPLocks and posted job vacancies to the company's 28 employees. In August 2009, Fortinet acquired the intellectual property rights and other assets from Woven Systems, an Ethernet switching company. According to information from International Data Corporation , the company was the largest provider of solutions for unified threat management at the time with a market share of 15.4 percent. The company had grown steadily and became profitable after making losses from 2004 to 2007. Fortinet was also a climber in CRN Magazine's Annual Survey-Based Report (ARC), ranking first in 2009.

Fortinet's initial placement took place in November 2009. The plan was to raise $ 52.4 million with the sale of 5.8 million shares. Numerous shareholders were selling their shares at the same time. Just before the first day of trading, Fortinet raised its share price from $ 9 to $ 12.50. On the first day of trading, the stock rose to $ 16.62 for $ 156 million.

Recent development

In 2010 Fortinet had annual sales of $ 324 million. In November of the same year, Bloomberg reported rumors that IBM was planning to acquire the company, which Fortinet denied. In December 2012, Fortinet took over XDN (formerly 3Crowd), the provider of the app hosting service CrowdDirector. In 2013, Fortinet acquired Coyote Point, an application provider, for an unspent sum.

In July 2013, Fortinet made changes to its reseller program to allow financing and other options for smaller managed security service providers. [36] Recently, some resellers complained that Fortinet was competing with its own resellers, while Fortinet said the company did not make direct sales.

Fortinet partnered with Palo Alto Networks to form the Cyber ​​Threat Alliance in 2014 to share security threat data between providers. Later that year, McAfee and Symantec joined the alliance. In May 2015, Fortinet acquired Silicon Valley-based Wi-Fi hardware company Meru Networks for $ 44 million. In late 2015, Fortinet security researchers demonstrated a Fitbit hack in which hackers gained access via Bluetooth and then had access to synchronized devices.

In June 2016, Fortinet acquired AccelOps, a software provider for IT security, monitoring and analysis, for approximately $ 28 million. According to ZDNet, the company was mainly known for its Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) products. These are products that analyze hardware and software security alerts.

In July 2020, Fortinet acquired OPAQ Networks, a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) cloud provider based in Herndon, Virginia.

Products

Fortinet FortiToken shows one-time password to

Fortinet develops and markets IT security and network hardware and software. The company's best-known product is the FortiGate range of security appliances, which combine many functions for information security. According to a 2015 report by the IT analyst firm The Dell'Oro Group, Fortinet had a market share of eight percent in terms of sales in 2014, compared to just 2.9 percent in 2012. This makes Fortinet the fourth largest provider in this industry. According to Fortinet, 35% of users of its products are in small businesses, 28% in medium-sized enterprises (Enterprises) and 37% in large companies.

FortiGate

Fortinet's FortiGate range of physical and virtual appliances for unified threat management includes various security features such as firewalls , intrusion prevention, web filters and protection against malware or spam . This product family includes solutions for small businesses and branches as well as for large companies, data centers and Internet service providers. This also includes Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW), which Gartner defines as products that combine firewalls, VPN, intrusion detection and other security functions.

As the first product from Fortinet, the FortiGate 3000 was published in October 2002, which had a throughput of 3 gigabits per second (Gbit / s). Two years later, the 5000 family appeared. According to The International Directory of Company Histories, Fortinet's early small business and branch products were well received in the industry.

In early 2013, Fortinet added firewall functionality to the FortiGate appliance, which was developed for internal networks and based on special ASICs. The FortiGate virtual appliance was added to Amazon Web Services in 2014. In April 2016, Fortinet announced the Fortinet Security Fabric, which will enable third parties to exchange information with Fortinet appliances and software using APIs. In addition, the FortiGate 6040E 320Gbit / s firewall was introduced, which includes the new CP9 ASIC, which takes some of the processing load from the main CPU, and which will be used in future FortiGate versions.

Further products

Fortinet offers many other software and hardware products, including more than a dozen products for switching , desktops , VOIP services , DNS, user authentication and other applications.

The company's FortiAnalyzer software provides reporting capabilities for Fortinet products, including event logging, security reporting, and analysis. FortiClient is an endpoint security product for desktops, phones, and other devices. FortiClient VPN software was first released in April 2004.

The FortiGuard antispam and FortiMail messaging security products were first released in February 2005. FortiManager, the data center security software, was launched in April 2003. Fortinet introduced its database security product family in 2008.

Fortinet's FortiSwitch switching platforms were launched in 2009 and application delivery controllers in August 2013. In October 2010, Fortinet released virtual software versions of its FortiGate, FortiManager, FortiAnalyzer and FortiMail appliances. The FortiCloud management system was updated in August 2015. A software-defined networking offer was presented in September 2015.

Fortinet manufactures and markets wireless versions of its FortiGate product under the name FortiWifi, first introduced in March 2004. In August 2015, Fortinet introduced a new family of cloud-based wireless access points. The FortiDDoS family of products was launched in March 2014.

operating system

FortiOS is the operating system for Fortinet devices. It uses a modified version of the Linux kernel as the kernel (derived from version 2.4.37 in FortiOS v.5.4.1) and ext2 as the file system. The web administration interface uses the Python framework django.

More activities

Fortinet maintains an in-house security research team, FortiGuard Labs, founded in 2005. There are four research and development centers in Asia and others in the United States , Canada and France . Fortinet offers a certification and training program with eight levels of NSE certification. The company also operates the Network Security Academy, which was founded in early 2016. It makes resources available to universities that offer courses on IT security.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Fortinet Inc. Annual Report 10-K (2016) . Archived from the original on April 9, 2017. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 8, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / investor.fortinet.com
  2. ^ A b c d e f g h i Karen Hill: International Directory of Company Histories: Fortinet , Volume 128. St James Press, 2012, pp. 223–227 (accessed March 10, 2015).
  3. ↑ a b Kenneth Tam, Martín H. Hoz Salvador, Ken McAlpine, Rick Basile, Bruce Matsugu, Josh More: UTM Security with Fortinet: Mastering FortiOS . Newnes, December 31, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59749-977-4 , pp. 16-17.
  4. ↑ a b Beverly Natividad: Real-time firewalls preserve performance . In: BusinessWorld , March 2, 2004. 
  5. ↑ Fortinet's Money Machine Rolls On . In: Network Computing , March 3, 2004. Accessed March 10, 2015.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.networkcomputing.com  
  6. ↑ Cheryl Meyer: Fortinet raises $ 50M , The Deal. March 2, 2004. 
  7. ↑ Christina Torode: Fortinet Adds New Partner Program . In: CRN , October 24, 2003. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  8. ↑ Tom Zeller: Study Says Software Makers Supply Tools to Censor Web . In: The New York Times , October 12, 2005. Retrieved March 15, 2015. 
  9. ^ IBP, Inc .: Myanmar Internet and E-Commerce Investment and Business Guide - Regulations and Opportunities . Lulu.com, August 1, 2013, ISBN 978-1-4387-3445-3 , pp. 57-58.
  10. ^ Peter Galli: Fortinet Under Fire for Allegedly Violating GPL Terms . May 14, 2005. Accessed March 11, 2015. 
  11. ↑ Ingrid Marson: Fortinet accused of GPL violation , ZDNet. April 14, 2005. Accessed March 11, 2015. 
  12. ↑ Ingrid Marson: Fortinet settles GPL violation suit , CNET. April 26, 2005. Accessed March 11, 2015. 
  13. ^ Grant Gross: Judge rules for Trend Micro in Fortinet patent case . In: Infoworld , May 13, 2005. Retrieved March 11, 2015. 
  14. ^ Paul Roberts: ITC Rules Against Fortinet in Patent Dispute . In: eWeek , August 9, 2005. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  15. ↑ Larry Hooper: Fortinet, Trend Micro Settle Antivirus Patent Dispute . In: CRN , January 30, 2006. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  16. ↑ John Dunn: Fortinet ordered to suspend US sales . In: Computerworld , August 11, 2005. Retrieved March 11, 2015. 
  17. ↑ Alan Shimel: The Patent That Refuses To Die . In: Network World , April 12, 2011. Retrieved March 14, 2015. 
  18. ^ Rob Wright: Sophos CEO Slams Fortinet In Response To Employee Poaching Lawsuit . December 20, 2013. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  19. ^ Martyn Williams: Fortinet sues Sophos over alleged employee poaching . December 17, 2013. Retrieved July 6, 2016.
  20. ^ Sarah Kuranda: Sophos And Fortinet End 2-Year Legal Feud Over Patents, Talent, Secrets . December 10, 2015. Accessed July 6, 2016.
  21. ↑ Ellen Messmer: Facebook's "Secret Crush" malicious widget tricks users . In: Network World , January 3, 2008. Retrieved August 5, 2016. 
  22. ↑ Matt Hines: Facebook hack fuels Web 2.0 concerns . In: InfoWorld , January 3, 2008. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  23. ^ Robert McMillan: Fortinet buys assets of security vendor IPLocks , IDG News Service. June 17, 2008. Accessed March 14, 2015. 
  24. ↑ Munir Kotadia: Woven Systems technology lives on with Fortinet . In: IT News , August 20, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  25. ↑ a b Computer security co. Fortinet plans IPO this week . In: Seattle Times , November 17, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  26. ↑ Lynn Cowan: Security Security: Fortinet IPO Jumps 33% . In: The Wall Street Journal , Nov. 19, 2006, p. C6. 
  27. ↑ Robert DeMarzo: Fortinet IPO: Love Of Services . September 25, 2009. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  28. ↑ Kelly Jackson: Product Watch: Fortinet Issues An IPO , Dark Reading. November 18, 2009. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  29. ^ Robert McMillan: Security Vendor Fortinet Sparkles in IPO , IDG News. November 18, 2009. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  30. ^ Peter Burrows: Fortinet Said to Be Approached by IBM; Shares Soar . November 1, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  31. ^ Fortinet Says IBM Acquisition Talk Untrue , Reuters. January 11, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  32. ^ Brian Prince: Fortinet Denies IBM Acquisition Rumors . November 1, 2010. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  33. ↑ Jim Davis: Did Fortinet acquire XDN in a bid to add more cache to its portfolio? , 451 Group. December 17, 2012. Accessed March 14, 2015. 
  34. ↑ Jim Davis: Did Fortinet acquire XDN in a bid to add more cache to its portfolio? . December 17, 2012. Accessed March 14, 2015. 
  35. ^ Stephen Lawson, Fortinet to Buy Coyote Point to Merge Security with Application Delivery , IDG News Service. March 22, 2013. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  36. ^ Rachel King: Fortinet buying Coyote Point for application delivery model , ZDNet. March 22, 2013. Accessed March 13, 2015. 
  37. ^ Nathan Eddy: McAfee, Symantec Join Cyber ​​Threat Alliance . In: eWeek , September 17, 2014. Retrieved March 14, 2015. 
  38. ↑ Chloe Albanesius: Obama Wants Tech Firms to Alert Feds to Cyber ​​Threats . In: PC Magazine , February 13, 2015. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  39. ↑ Jeremy Owens: Biz Break: Fortinet steps up security challenge to Cisco with Meru acquisition . In: The San Jose Mercury News . Accessed June 10, 2015. 
  40. ^ Sarah Kuranda: Fortinet Dives Deep Into Enterprise Secure Wireless Market With Meru Networks Acquisition . In: CRN , May 27, 2015. Retrieved June 10, 2015. 
  41. ↑ Elizabeth Weise: Fitbit hacked from 10 feet away, security firm says . In: USA TODAY , October 22, 2015. Retrieved March 10, 2016. 
  42. ↑ fitbit: Fitbit hack: '10 second 'vulnerability makes wearables spew malware (Wired UK) . February 11, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  43. ^ Sarah Kuranda: Fortinet Dives Into SIEM Market With $ 28M Acquisition Of AccelOps . June 7, 2016. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
  44. ↑ Natalie Gagliordi: Fortinet acquires security analytics firm AccelOps . June 7, 2016. Retrieved June 16, 2016.
  45. ↑ a b Fortinet Security Fabric. May 15, 2016, accessed December 21, 2016 .
  46. ↑ Amy Reeves: Will Investors Find Safe Haven With Network Security Company? . In: Investor's Business Daily , November 17, 2009. 
  47. ^ Tim Greene: Dell Oro Group: Check Point, Fortinet, Palo Alto making gains in security appliances . August 25, 2015. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  48. ↑ Worldwide Security Appliance Market Continues Its Growth Trajectory in the First Half of 2015, According to IDC . September 14, 2015. Archived from the original on September 19, 2016. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 16, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.idc.com
  49. ↑ a b c Fortinet Inc. Annual Report 10-K . Retrieved May 10, 2016.
  50. ↑ a b c d K. Tam, MHH Salvador, K. McAlpine, R. Basile, B. Matsugu, J. More: UTM Security with Fortinet: Mastering FortiOS . Elsevier Science, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59749-977-4 , p. 36 (Accessed August 5, 2016).
  51. ↑ Ellen Messmer: Fortinet unveils high-speed security blade for Fortigate-5000 chassis: FortiGate-5001B blade combines firewall, VPN, IPS, application controls, filtering . In: Network World , November 30, 2010. 
  52. ^ Paul Roberts: Fortinet to unveil 3Gbps security appliance . In: Infoworld , October 22, 2002. 
  53. ↑ Tim Greene: Fortinet revs its security gear . In: Network World , March 10, 2003. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  54. ^ Matt Villano: Fortinet Welcomes New VPs, Finishes Security Appliance . In: CRN , September 13, 2004. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  55. ^ Andrew Conry-Murray: Fortinet's Anti-Virus Firewall . In: Network Magazine , September 2004. 
  56. ^ Fortinet Releases Internal Network Firewall . In: eWeek.com , January 23, 2015. Retrieved June 24, 2016. 
  57. ^ Nathan Eddy: Fortinet Security Platform Hits Amazon Web Services . In: eWeek , March 27, 2014. Retrieved June 11, 2015. 
  58. ^ Tim Greene: New security fabric to unite Fortinet gear with that of other vendors . In: Network World , April 25, 2016. Retrieved May 10, 2016. 
  59. ↑ FortiNet FortiAnalyzer completed validation with QRADAR SIEM . ibm.com. May 28, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2016.
  60. ↑ Neil Rubenking: FortiClient 5.0 . In: PC Magazine . Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  61. ↑ Peter Stephenson: Fortinet FortiClient 5.0 for Windows . In: SC Magazine , August 1, 2013. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  62. ^ Matt Villano: Fortinet Branches Out, Launches Client Solution . In: CRN , April 1, 2004. Retrieved March 11, 2015. 
  63. ↑ Time Greene: Fortinet uncorks security mgmt. app . In: Network World , April 7, 2003. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  64. ^ Brian Prince: Fortinet Builds Database Monitoring, Auditing into Portfolio . In: eWeek , January 21, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  65. ^ Nathan Eddy: Fortinet Offers FortiGate Security Appliance . In: eWeek , November 12, 2009. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  66. ↑ Nathan Eddy: Fortinet Expands Application Delivery portfolio . In: eWeek , August 15, 2013. Retrieved March 13, 2015. 
  67. ^ Tim Greene: Fortinet goes virtual: Fortinet announces virtual versions of four of its appliances . In: Network World , October 12, 2010. 
  68. ↑ a b CIO.in: Fortinet launches industry's most secure cloud-managed enterprise Wi-Fi solution . Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  69. ↑ Michael Cusanelli: Fortinet Develops SDNS Framework, Expands Partner Ecosystem . In: Network Security and Data Protection Software Solutions content from The VAR Guy , September 14, 2015. Retrieved March 10, 2016. 
  70. ↑ Security in SDN effort puts Fortinet in limelight . March 10, 2016. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  71. ^ Frank Ohlhorst: Fortinet Unit Shines for Wi-Fi . In: CRN , March 26, 2004. Retrieved March 10, 2015. 
  72. ^ David Strom: Wireless Routers Worth Your Consideration - We examine five products . In: VARbusiness , May 3, 2004, p. 63. 
  73. ^ Nathan Eddy: Fortinet Unveils Line of DDoS Security Appliances . In: eWeek , March 11, 2014. Retrieved March 15, 2015. 
  74. ^ Fortinet Adds Four New Appliances To DDoS Portfolio . In: CRN , March 18, 2014. Retrieved March 14, 2015. 
  75. ↑ Comparing the best NGFWs on the market . Retrieved July 15, 2016.
  76. ↑ Eileen Yu: Fortinet establishes R&D lab in Singapore , ZDNet. August 27, 2014. Accessed March 14, 2014. 
  77. ^ Howard Solomon: New online IT training touted to help meet skills shortage , IT World Canada. July 29, 2014. Accessed March 14, 2015. 
  78. ^ Howard Solomon: Fortinet creates new Network Security Expert certification , IT World Canda. July 29, 2014. Accessed March 15, 2015. 
  79. ^ Intel, Fortinet, launch cybersecurity initiatives . March 22, 2016. Accessed June 24, 2016.

literature

Web links