Fortinet: New Antivirus Technology Bucks The Trend

The U.S. International Trade Commission in August ordered Fortinet to stop selling products that contain its antivirus software within the United States. The ITC&'s order stems from an earlier ruling that Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Fortinet&'s antivirus software violates a Trend Micro patent dealing with scanning for viruses at the gateway.

That ruling stirred the channel, leaving VARs with Fortinet in their inventory wondering if they could sell it and putting many customers into a holding pattern.

Fortinet executives claim that the new antivirus technology, which will ship on all FortiGate all-in-one security appliances and is available for download as a maintenance release, avoids Trend Micro&'s patent infringement claims, while further advancing the security its appliances are providing.

Anthony James, the senior product manager at Fortinet who headed up the development effort on the technology, said Fortinet&'s new approach scans all e-mail files in realtime, against both a traditional virus signature list and a new “hot list” of the 10 to 20 most active viruses and worms. The hot list disassociates the scan from file types, making it more likely to catch a variant of a new worm, James said.

The new antivirus technology also now scans e-mails as each object is completed rather than waiting for the entire message to be buffered before initiating a scan, James said. Fortinet has applied for a patent of this “realtime” antivirus scanning, he added.

The new antivirus approach should put the Trend Micro issue behind Fortinet, said Mike Bramm, CTO of CompuNet International, a regional VAR based in Minneapolis. “We have had some customers who love the product but have been in a holding pattern since that ruling,” Bramm said. “But this will take care of it. We can get back to business with a company that makes a great product.”

But Steve Barone, president of Creative Breakthroughs, a Shelby Township, Mich., solution provider, said he was “leery and skeptical.”

Fortinet recently told Barone that it was very close to cutting a deal with Trend Micro to license its antivirus technology, he said. “So this sounds like Plan B to me.”

Barone added that he had hoped Fortinet and Trend Micro would come to an agreement. “Having Trend&'s antivirus technology on those boxes gave customers confidence,” he said. “That was part of the sale.”

While he wouldn&'t comment on or confirm any negotiations between Trend Micro and Fortinet, Lane Bess, president of North American operations for Trend Micro, said his company&'s intention with the legal actions was to protect its intellectual property, not to put Fortinet out of business.

“If they have managed to do this, then good for them,” Bess said. “If they indeed have a legitimate solution that doesn&'t use our technology, then good luck to them.”