Fortinet(R) Collaborates With VMware to Deliver Advanced Security Services for Unified Virtual and Physical Networks

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 26, 2013) - Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a world leader in high-performance network security, today announced a proof of concept designed to secure traffic traversing virtual networks at the hypervisor level. With this approach, the security enforcement point is no longer required to be directly in the flow of traffic on the physical network and allows for injecting security controls before the traffic traverses the virtual network layer.

Specifically, the proof of concept will show secured traffic flow in a VMware virtualized network environment that highlights security policy enforcement of communication across and between physical and logical workloads. This proof of concept will debut at VMworld® 2013 in San Francisco, August 25-29 in Fortinet's booth (#642).

"Historically, security controls were required to be directly in the path of affected communication flow. Our VMware integration allows for a much less intrusive design and enables dynamic policy control," said Elie Bitton, senior director, product management - virtualization and management for Fortinet. "Today's demonstration enhances our already mature unified threat management VM product line and gives our customers yet another choice regarding how they want to deploy security for cloud and software defined data center architectures. As customers begin to virtualize the cloud network with the new VMware NSX™ network virtualization platform, we will provide holistic security across virtual and physical infrastructures."

As leading IT organizations move toward software defined data centers, they are looking for solutions that can be inserted and deleted on demand to after maximum agility and service quality. VMware NSX will virtualize the network and provide a platform for logical security and network services. VMware NSX will leverage a distributed service framework to facilitate partner service insertion.

"VMware is working with a best-in-class security ecosystem of partners to automate and simplify security for customers embracing network virtualization as they transition to the software-defined data center," said Milin Desai, director, product management, VMware. "Together, VMware and Fortinet are collaborating to ensure smooth operations, IT efficiency and business continuity as customers virtualize their networks."

In addition to the proof of concept, Fortinet will also be running nine of their currently available virtual appliances in their booth during the show. Fortinet has been collaborating with VMware since the introduction of the FortiGate and FortiManager virtual appliances in 2010. Since then, the company has constantly upgraded these and introduced seven additional virtual appliances, including FortiMail™, FortiAnalyzer™, FortiWeb™, FortiAuthenticator, FortiADC, FortiCache and FortiScan™.