Fortinet opens gate to new security appliance

Network security provider Fortinet Inc has unveiled its latest security appliance, called the FortiGate-3140B. It is aimed at protecting enterprises and datacentres against online threats and malware.

"The FortiGate-3140B has features like a firewall, antivirus, antispyware, virtual private network (VPN) and anintrusion prevention system (IPS), said George Chang, regional director for South-East Asia and Hong Kong at Fortinet (S) Pte Ltd.

"All these can protect businesses against current and emerging threats, especially in a cloud-computing environment.

"VPN, for example, provides secure communications between many networks and hosts using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) technologies. This is to ensure a customer's data, which may reside in a cloud, is always protected."


The appliance, which is a two-rack unit, offers up to 10 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. It provides up to 58Gbps (gigabits per second) of firewall performance, 10Gbps of IPsec performance, and up to 22Gbps of VPN performance.

Chang said it runs on FortiASIC chips, having both a content and network processor. The content processor helps reduce bottlenecks in antivirus, encryption/decryption in VPN, and authentication processing.

The network processor, meanwhile, improves network throughput for traffic with small packets, such as VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) and latency-sensitive traffic, such as streaming multimedia.

Fortinet's FortiGate-3140B operates on the FortiOS 4.03 MR3 operating system (OS). This new OS offers features that include wireless controller extensions which support the automatic provisioning of wireless access points, as well as the detection and suppression of rogue access points.

The OS also enables a feature called active profiling, which helps discover and mitigate threats by establishing a behavioral baseline for a computer network. It then monitors the network for deviations and alerts the IT administrators if any are encountered.

The FortiGate-3140B retails for between US$60,000 and US$90,000 depending on specifications.