Foreword

Fortinet was founded in a small Silicon Valley garage in November 2000. Today it is a publically traded company (NASDAQ:FTNT) and has more than 1600 employees worldwide. There are many factors that help contribute to the rapid growth of the company; one of the most important factors is that here at Fortinet we are able to continuously react to the demands of the rapidly changing security landscape in which we live creating products and services that truly meet customers’ needs and address their concerns. The motivation for founding this company was the realization that content based attacks would become the prevalent tool used by computer hackers and criminals and none of the existing network security vendors would be able to effectively address this fundamental issue effectively.

Our first generation of the FortiGate product family, the Antivirus Firewall, was able to detect and remove content-based attacks. Eradicating these viruses and worms from the network remains a cornerstone of today’s FortiGate functionality. With the outbreak of network based worms such as CodeRed, Nimbda, Slammer, this new FortiGate appliance quickly proved to be an essential tool for many a network security administrator protecting universities, finance houses, industrial complexes, retail chains and enterprise customers from these devastating infections.

The landscape changed, and newer threats such as spam, phishing, pharming, browser vulnerability attacks and botnets came one after the other, these unceasing attacks created a nightmare scenario for the network security administrator. Fortunately, the network security industry responded to this change. Various techniques and solutions have now been developed to protect the network from these attacks. Fortinet remains a trusted name in the network security industry. Along the way, Fortinet has evolved its flagship FortiGate product family into a very effective tool to defend against all these attacks and more. The benefit of the FortiGate product is not limited to the individual techniques that are used to protect against each attack a key change was that for the first time an effective multilayer defense was combined in to a single appliance. As more and more of our customers adopted this approach the wider security industry began to take notice. The term Unified Threat Management (UTM) was coined by IDC in 2004 and a new category of network security devices was born.

Today UTM is a multi-billion dollar market and is growing rapidly. Fortinet is proud to be the market leader of this security segment. I believe the real drive for UTM’s market growth is the growth in computer network technology. Today, building a computer network is no longer rocket science, no longer a place where only a few highly trained technologists can be successful. There are more and more homes, small offices, retail chain stores that are wired with dozens of devices such as printers, file servers, cash registers, stock control systems and workstations. People from all walks of life, such as doctors, lawyers, grocers, restaurateurs, taught themselves how to build up a network with a book, or some cursory Internet research. Following step-by-step instructions on web sites or stepping through online videos. While professional network security administrators are working on new challenges, creating the super fast networks (100Gbps and beyond) to feed the data centers of tomorrow; or building distributed, high availability virtual networks using load-balanced solutions and VPN technology.

This is why I feel excited about the <book name>. This book illustrates the UTM concepts in a very clear manner; it provides real-life and immediately relevant examples on how to build a secured network for various types of usage, such as schools, banks, and retail shops. The book shows how the challenges faced by these different types of network can be solved and successful solutions built in easy to follow steps. It has something for both an amateur network administrator, as well as for a seasoned network professional who is willing to learn from his peers.

I’ve known most of the contributing authors for many years. When they talked to me about their work on this book, it immediately struck a chord with me. The combination of their experience, knowledge and passion make them the dream team to write about this topic. Most of them have had many years of real-life hands-on experience in building secured networks using our FortiGate product within many verticals for some of the most demanding customers in the world. They also share this knowledge running both internal and external master classes.

No matter what business you are in, if you are thinking about building or maintaining a secure network, you can benefit from the concepts and techniques used in <this book>. Remember, you’ll enjoy your network investment much more if it is secured from all those hackers and bad guys out there.

Security is our business.

Michael Xie

CTO, Founder, Fortinet, Inc.