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Fortinet extends multi-threat security

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE: Fortinet has announced a major firmware upgrade for its family of FortiGate and FortiManager systems that enhance customers' security posture and ease the means by which they deploy and manage network security.

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According to Fortinet, through an extensive array of new features, FortiOS 3.0 and FortiManager 3.0 bring significant new capabilities that enable more granular security for online applications, including complete content protection for instant messaging and enhanced security for peer-to-peer traffic.

“Additionally, tighter integration between Fortinet's FortiGate, FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer systems enables more robust centralized network security management, reporting and analysis for enterprises and MSSPs,” it said in a statement.

Instant messaging (IM) applications have become increasingly popular business communications tools, and favored targets for attackers. In 2005 attacks on IM applications rose significantly, with attackers using sophisticated social engineering to trick computer users into downloading fast-propagating worms, opening virus-infected files or URLs, or unknowingly installing malicious code.

Until now, addressing the IM security problem required that enterprises either purchase and manage separate "point" solutions or settle for weak security processes like simply blocking or allowing the traffic.

Fortinet is the first vendor to integrate complete content protection - including full antivirus (AV) scanning, blocking and quarantining of IM traffic and file attachments, intrusion prevention (IPS) signature updates, and URL filtering -- for IM applications into an existing multi-threat security system. FortiOS 3.0 also provides instant messaging access control, and logging and reporting statistics to deliver administrators increased control over and their IM applications. The firmware supports popular enterprise IM protocols, including AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo.

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