Fortinet Security Blade Targets Data Centres

Fortinet has made available a new security blade for its FortiGate 5000 -series chassis firewall that’s designed to appeal to managed security service providers, carriers and large enterprises.

The FortiGate 5001C blade delivers up to 40 Gbps of firewall throughput and up to 17 Gbps of IP Security throughput. It also delivers 9.8 Gbps of IPS performance and 128 GB of storage – more than double the storage capacity of the FortiGate-5001B blade – and integrates security functions such as a next-generation firewall, virtual private network and application control in a blade.

Demanding Data Centres

According to the company, by consolidating multiple security services, the FortiGate-5001C protects low-latency networks and multi-tenant cloud customers against blended threats and Web-based attacks. In addition, Fortinet’s virtual domain (VDOM) and administrative domain (ADOM) technologies permit administrators to have more granular control over the deployment of the new security blade to partition networks on the basis of individual customers, groups of subscribers or business units.

“The security and performance needs of complex data centres and multi-tenant cloud providers are constantly evolving, which is why we continue to innovate with new blade solutions for these extremely demanding network environments,” said Michael Xie, CTO and vice president of engineering at Fortinet, in a statement.

“No two customer environments are identical and each customer’s security requirements are highly individualised. It is precisely because of this market reality that we push our product development efforts to provide our customers with the most flexible deployment options possible.”

“The introduction of the FortiGate-5001C blade delivers on our commitment to provide unmatched performance and protection,” he said.

Customised Chips

Each blade features four 10-GbE ports to provide the scalability needed to help protect large enterprises and carrier networks. To deliver network throughput performance, the FortiGate-5001C blades feature the latest FortiASIC processors that optimise session rates and accelerated IPS performance.

Unlike competing firewall manufacturers that rely on off-the-shelf processors, Fortinet develops its own customised processors that have established the FortiGate-5000 as the world’s fastest firewall.

The FortiGate-5001C runs on the FortiOS 5 operating system, which includes more than 150 security features that are designed to protect against advanced persistent threats and targeted attacks. Among these features is an advanced malware engine that both reduces the size and increases the performance of the malware signature database. In addition, an inline sandbox applies behaviour models against a sample to determine if it is a threat.

FortiOS 5 can also scan and identify vulnerabilities via a network or agent scan, and the intrusion protection system function can be deployed to protect vulnerable assets until they are patched. The operating system also has the ability to apply network access policies based on the user and the device identity.

“With the FortiGate-5001C, large enterprises, particularly those looking at data centre consolidation, and managed security service providers can deploy the security they need without introducing latency,” said Chris Rodriguez, senior industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, in a statement. “Security no longer needs to be a ‘speed bump’.”

FortiGate 5001C is available now.

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Originally published on eWeek.