Fortinet Strengthens Mid-Enterprise with Next-Gen Firewall

Network security provider Fortinet (FTNT) revealed its latest next-generation firewall (NGFW) platforms, as the company soldiers ahead with its goal to drive NGFW sales in small and midsize enterprises. Both new offerings are expected to provide enterprise users with five times next-gen performance to protect from malicious software.

“Traditional firewalls have not kept pace with the changing threat landscape, forcing organizations to look to next-generation firewalls for a deeper level of inspection,” said John Maddison, vice president of Marketing at Fortinet, in a statement.  “With Fortinet’s high-performance appliances, any natural firewall refresh or web filtering renewal presents the opportunity to add new security functions yet consolidate security devices—a ‘win-win’ scenario for customers.”

Both the FortiGate 300D and 500D models are powered by the company’s FortiOS network security platform, and feature NSS Labs-recommended next-gen firewall capabilities, as well as intrusion prevention, anti-malware and anti-phishing software. The devices offer flexible web filtering for more than 100 million sites, as well as actionable visibility and rich reporting capabilities and optional NSS Labs-recommended breach detection, according to the company.

Enterprise users can utilize the included FortiASIC NP6 processors in both NGFW models, which include generic routing encapsulation acceleration, anomaly-based intrusion prevention and other methods to prevent data breaches.  Fortinet has clocked the firewall throughput of its 300D and 500D models at 8Gbps and 16Gbps, respectively.

Both the 300D and 500D next-gen firewall models are available now in North America through Fortinet’s channel partners. The release of its latest NGFW products continues Fortinet’s goal of maneuvering into the enterprise security space, after the company announced that it would be increasing its focus on corporate users in May. Fortinet also recently joined forces with Palo Alto Networks to institute the industry’s first cyber defense consortium as both companies seek to share information and raise awareness on digital threats to the channel.