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September 13, 2010 - Fortinet® - a leading network security provider and a worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that its FortiOS™ operating system, which is the backbone of the company's FortiGate® multi-threat security appliances, and FortiMail™ messaging security appliances have earned Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 certifications from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In addition to these certifications, Fortinet's FortiGate appliances are now listed on the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Unified Capabilities Approved Product List (UC APL), approving them for use by all DoD agencies.

While enhanced access for government employees has increased efficiency for federal agencies, it has also exposed them to more threats, such as viruses, spam, spyware and worms. The FIPS certification was created to address these threats by requiring a higher level of performance from cryptographic modules used in federal government agency networks. The DoD UC APL is tested by the Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC), which is a U.S. military organization that tests technology that pertains to multiple branches of the armed services and government. JITC's mission is to provide a full range of rapid, standardized and customized test, evaluation and certification services to support global net-centric war fighting capabilities under all conditions of peace and war.

"Mission critical applications, such as those used by the Federal government, require truly fast and robust security systems," said Phil Fuster, vice president of Federal operations for Fortinet. "We are pleased to receive FIPS 140-2 certification for both our consolidated and messaging security systems, as well as to be added to the UC APL. We look forward to working with the U.S. Federal government and its organizations and providing them with broad security solutions that will further their defense in depth computing strategy."

In addition to these latest FIPS and DoD UC APL certifications, Fortinet's FortiGate multi-threat security appliance models have Common Criteria EAL4+, and have received U.S. Army IA APL certification. FortiOS has also received Common Criteria EAL4+ certified by NIAP. And FortiMail, Fortinet's messaging security appliance, has also received Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL 2+) certification.

Fortinet's FortiGate systems are ASIC-accelerated security appliances that integrate core security and network functionalities including firewall, SSL and IPSec VPN, antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, antispam, application control, data loss prevention, SSL traffic inspection and WAN optimization. All FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard® Network, which helps protect against the most damaging, content-based threats from email and Web traffic such as viruses, worms, intrusions, other unwanted network traffic and more – around the clock and around the world. FortiGuard and the advanced heuristics found in the tightly integrated FortiOS coupled with the FortiASICS security co-processors defend from zero-minute worm attacks. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards and are certified in five programs by ICSA Labs for firewall, antivirus, IPSec VPN, network IPS and antispam.

The FortiMail family of appliances delivers proven, powerful messaging security for any size organization, from small businesses to carriers, service providers, and large enterprises. Purpose-built for the most demanding messaging systems, the FortiMail appliances utilize Fortinet's years of experience in protecting networks against spam, malware, and other message-borne threats.