Fortinet Adds New Prevention Technology

The updated platform now accelerates stateful inspection, which looks at e-mail headers, and deep packet inspection, which checks packet content. In addition, the technology now performs what the company calls complete content protection.

Unlike deep packet inspection, which looks at packets individually, complete content protection gathers all packets and reassembles them to check for threats.

"Deep packet inspection has its uses, but say someone is sending parts for a tank to Libya in different boxes, just as a worm would be sent in several packets individually, as an example," said Rick Kagan, vice president of marketing at Fortinet, Sunnyvale, Calif. "Deep packet inspection only sees individual packets, or pieces, and not the whole picture, while complete content protection gathers all the pieces and realizes it's a threat as a whole."

The new operating system now not only detects viruses and worms, but automatically prevents them and can detect more than 1,400 intrusions. The platform deters content-based attacks overall by combining antivirus, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention, said the company.

Fortinet also formed a partnership with Cerberian, Salt Lake City, which has an online database of more than 5 million URLs that have offensive or inappropriate content, such as pornography or gambling sites.

In addition, the company unveiled support for a developing standard called IPv6, which would allow a significant amount of IP addresses for devices.

"As is stands, with IPv4 we're running out of addresses," said Kagan. "It's comparable to the world running out of phone numbers, but IPv6 promises to allow for a ridiculously large number of addresses for individually addressable devices from a toaster to a phone or PDA. This is still years away, of course."

For managed service providers, the platform now gives them the ability to use a single FortiGate 3000 or 3600 device to support multiple users with the appearance that the customer has its own box. This is akin to shared Web hosting and saves both the MSP and the customer money, according to partners.

Fortinet works with the channel and has a relationship with distributors Westcon Group and Alternative Technology.