Fortinet Helps Protect More Than 123,000 South Dakota K-12 Students, Faculty and Staff From Inappropriate Websites

State of South Dakota Standardizes on Fortinet for Firewall and Content Filtering Protection

Fortinet® -- the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -- today announced that the State of South Dakota Department of Education has purchased more than 200 Fortinet FortiGate(TM), FortiManager(TM) and FortiAnalyzer(TM) security appliances. The Fortinet solutions are replacing the state's previous K-12 SonicWall solution to help provide firewall protection and Web content filtering for its network of more than 123,000 users, which include students, faculty and staff.

The Bureau of Information and Telecommunications, through the South Dakota Department of Education, provides technology services for the K-12 community. These services include wide area networking (WAN), Internet, distance learning, video conferencing, email, Web hosting, a student information system, technology consulting and cyber security services. Previously using a SonicWall network security solution, BIT decided to look at other solutions when their previous solution was having problems meeting security performance and reporting requirements. Having looked at multiple vendors, BIT selected Fortinet for its ability to provide a scalable product suite that integrated firewall and Web content filtering for individual schools to report on Internet usage.

BIT is using a full spectrum of Fortinet's FortiGate multi-threat security appliance models -- from the FortiGate-50B designed for small offices to the FortiGate-3600A for large enterprises. BIT is deploying one FortiGate appliance at more than 200 schools to help protect them from malicious attacks against critical network data such as student records, grades and personnel files as well as safeguard all students, faculty and staff from inappropriate Website content.

Using the number of users and the network size of each school as a determinant for which Fortinet appliance to use, the State of South Dakota purchased the following Fortinet FortiGate appliances:

--  28 x FortiGate-50B appliances
--  49 x FortiGate-100A appliances
--  67 x FortiGate-200A appliances
--  20 x FortiGate-300A appliances
--  39 x FortiGate-500A appliances
--  12 x FortiGate-1000A appliances
--  2 x FortiGate-3600A appliances
    

BIT was also in need of a network security reporting and analysis solution and purchased Fortinet's FortiManager-3000 and FortiAnalyzer-2000 carrier-class appliances for deployment at its data center. The FortiManager system will be used as the centralized management platform for BIT's Fortinet security infrastructure. The FortiAnalyzer system will easily aggregate, analyze and report on Internet usage of the thousands of school district students, faculty and staff and monitor and analyze attempted network attacks.

"We needed to upgrade our security solution and when we looked at the Fortinet solution we were impressed with the performance, scalability and integrated functionality offered by the FortiGate appliances," said Jim Edman, manager, Network Technologies for State of South Dakota Bureau of Information and Telecommunications. "While our immediate needs are firewall and Web content filtering, the FortiGate solutions provide the option of easily utilizing other functionalities."

Fortinet's FortiGate systems are ASIC-accelerated security appliances that integrate essential security applications such as antivirus, firewall, VPN, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, anti-spam and traffic shaping. All FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically by Fortinet's FortiGuard Network, which helps ensure protection 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. FortiGate systems are centrally managed by Fortinet's FortiManager appliances which minimize the administrative effort required to deploy, configure, monitor and maintain the full range of network protection services provided by Fortinet products.

FortiAnalyzer systems are purpose built appliances that provide valuable intelligence and simplify and centralize the collection and analysis of log and event data from Fortinet's FortiGate security appliances, delivering highly relevant network reports, valuable intelligence on network usage and assistance with meeting regulatory compliance.

"Regulations like CIPA and COPPA mandate that K-12 educational institutions employ proper security measures designed to protect students from harmful and inappropriate Web content," said Karl Soderlund, Fortinet's vice president, Americas. "As BIT and numerous other educational institutions have found, Fortinet uniquely meets their various security, compliance and management requirements with our integrated high-performance appliances."

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)

Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection -- including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and anti-spam -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified eight times over by ICSA Labs (firewall, antivirus, IPSec, SSL, IPS, client antivirus detection, cleaning and antispyware). Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.

Fortinet is a registered trademark of Fortinet, Inc. Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiOS, FortiAnalyzer, FortiASIC, FortiCare, FortiManager, FortiWiFi, FortiGuard, FortiClient, and FortiReporter are trademarks of the Fortinet, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.