Adding to its already impressive lineup of high-performance enterprise firewalls, Fortinet – a global leader in high-performance network security – launched its new high-performance next-generation firewall destined to disrupt the security market. The FortiGate -1500D delivers unparalleled threat prevention and performance in a flexible appliance form factor to further meet enterprise requirements.

The FortiGate-1500D delivers the best in class results in terms of price and performance with:

* High-Performance Stateful Firewall – achieves 80Gbps firewall throughput, which sets a new standard of price per Gbps protected traffic
* High-Performance Next-Generation Threat Prevention – provides 11Gbps intrusion prevention and application control performance, which is five times faster than any price comparable next-generation firewall
* Unparalleled Processing Power – utilises the latest FortiASIC NP6 network processor and CP8 content processor to detect malicious content at multi-Gigabit speeds without affecting the network’s availability or performance and provide an ultra-low latency down to three microseconds.

Beyond price/performance advantages, the FortiGate-1500D delivers the best in class prevention with:

* Deeper visibility and control – the FortiGate-1500D has full control over content, applications, user and device behaviour, allowing administrators to quickly understand threats and stop them.

This is enabled by Fortinet’s FortiOS 5 operating system, which includes access control and threat prevention features such as advanced malware detection, exploit discovery and protection, cloud-based reputation systems and a multi-vector policy engine that can apply policies based on the user and device identity.

* Complete and realtime security – the FortiGate-1500D is powered by the FortiGuard Subscription Services that deliver automated, real-time, up-to-date protection against the latest security threats thanks to FortiGuard Labs.

This is a global team of approximately 200 experts and engineers, leveraging more than 10 years of experience and collaboration with Fortinet’s customers and leading threat organisations. Today, FortiGuard Labs leads in zero-day threats research with 18 critical zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in 2013 – more than any other network security vendor in the industry. This adds to the 140+ zero-day vulnerabilities identified since 2006.

The FortiGate-1500D includes eight 10GbE (SFP+) and 32GbE ports in a high-density, compact (2U) appliance form factor. As enterprises build out or redesign their networks, segmentation is taking a more critical role in their architecture. The segmentation may be based on perimeter architecture, services, function or regulatory requirements and effectively separates networks physically or virtually to better provide security service level agreements.

The high GbE port density of the FortiGate-1500D gives enterprises the flexibility to meet their changing architecture requirements. The FortiGate-1500D can also provide highly scalable virtual segmentation through its Virtual Domain (VDOM) capability, supporting multiple virtual firewalls within a single chassis.

“Without a doubt, the move to faster network technologies is forcing enterprises to look at upgrading every moving part of their IT infrastructure, and firewalls are no different,” says Jeff Wilson, Principal Security Analyst at Infonetics. “The need to add high-speed interfaces to firewalls (10G, 40G and eventually 100G) and increase multi-function security performance top the list of drivers for investing in new high-performance firewalls.”

Today’s announcement further exemplifies why FortiOS is the world’s most advanced network security operating system. Combined with FortiGate appliances, which feature high performance, purpose-built network, content and SoC processors, FortiOShas been certified by industry-leading test and measurement labs, such as NSS Labs, ICSA Labs, Common Criteria, Virus Bulletin and FIPS.

In addition, the FortiGate appliances have received “recommended” ratings for both their superior intrusion prevention and firewall performance from NSS Labs.

On the IPS side, Fortinet’s products delivered an unmatched throughput and low latency, blocked 95.0% of attacks against client applications and 96% overall and correctly identified 100% of NSS’ evasion attempts without error. On the firewall side, Fortinet scored 100% for Stability, Evasion, Leakage and in the central management review.

“With the new FortiGate-1500D, enterprises can have it all – cutting edge network speed coupled with state of the art network security,” says Patrice Perche, senior vice-president of international sales and support for Fortinet. “The FortiGate-1500D is an ideal enterprise network security platform for both high performance firewalling to enforce traditional access control and next-generation firewalling for a deeper level of content inspection and threat prevention.”