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SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 12, 2011 - Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT) - a leading network security provider and the worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that Griffith University, a 37,000 person premier university in Australia, has expanded its deployment of FortiGate® multi-threat appliances. After seven years of successfully using FortiGate appliances, Griffith University decided again to entrust its growing network to Fortinet with the adoption of FortiGate-3951 and FortiWifi-50B appliances.

As its network grew to more than 37,000 users, in 2010, the University upgraded its Fortinet deployment to include the FortiGate-3951 appliance for antivirus protection and intrusion prevention. In addition, FortiWifi-50B appliances were added to help support the University's new 3G wireless project. Griffith University has redeployed the FortiGate-3810, FortiGate-3600 and FortiGate-800 appliances, originally purchased for deeper protection of its wireless networks. To manage and analyze all network traffic, the University has also deployed a FortiAnalyzer-2000A appliance. In addition to logging and reporting, the University is leveraging the vulnerability management feature of the FortiAnalyzer to scan its network for vulnerabilities.

Griffith University is regarded as one of Australia's most innovative tertiary institutions and one of the Asia-Pacific region's most influential universities. With five campuses and more than 37,000 faculty, staff and students using the open network, it was critical for them to protect specific parts of the network - the network perimeter, the network core and the wireless network.

"During peak times of the day, the University sees 190,000 concurrent sessions and the FortGate's IPS functionally can handle it great," said Gary Galbraith, principal network engineer at Griffith University. "The Fortinet appliances are performing well. They work and don't require babysitting - they do their job."

Griffith also conducted its own independent tests using commercial load testing equipment from IXIA and found that FortiGate-3951 appliance met or exceeded performance benchmarks stated in its datasheets. For example stress test showed a maximum ramp up rate of 4600 new "processed" connections per second. During the session ramp up test the concurrent sessions maintained was much higher at 500,000 - 650,000 sessions and stable. Overall, the FortiGate-3951 showed it could handle 900,000 concurrent sessions and 500Mbps of throughput without any network performance degradation.

"Enterprises and institutions such as Griffith University are rapidly seeing the benefits of deploying a few or all security functionalities available in FortiGate appliances," said Kevin Dyson, regional director for Fortinet Australian and New Zealand. "By offering multiple functionalities within a single appliance, Fortinet allows its customers to pick and choose what is necessary for their individual network."

Something New, Something Old - Still Secure

A FortiGate-3951 appliance is located on the outside of the University's network and provides full denial of service, intrusion prevention and antivirus functionality. Another FortiGate-3810 appliance is located on the internal network and is being used for denial of service protection.

To clean the wireless network of all campuses, Griffith University has deployed FortiGate-3810 and FortiGate-3600 appliances. The FortiGate appliances help act as the gateway denial of service, antivirus and intrusion prevention solution for all traffic going to and from the wireless and remote access networks.

With various campuses and 37,000 faculty, staff and students accessing the network, it was critical for the IT staff to have a network management solution. The previous solution of maintaining Web logs and Web case logs wasn't fulfilling the need for archiving more than three months worth of data. The FortiAnalyzer-2000A management solution is being used to help monitor all data traversing the network and is able to retain several months of logs without having to rotate any logs.

In addition to helping protect its distributed campus network architecture, the University also sponsors a special Wifi project called "Sonic Babylon" which uses wireless 3G connectivity to allow users to plant sounds where they are located based on GPS coordinates. The project is secured by FortiWifi-50B appliances, which are being used for antivirus, IPS and WAN acceleration. Each FortiWifi appliance connects back to FortiGate-800 appliances located on the University's campus.