Re: Fortigate Appliance

[Mark Rogowski <m.rogowski () UWINNIPEG CA>]

A FortiGate is used here mainly for Anti virus and some light content filtering (where possible).  As others have 
mentioned, it is a jack-of-all-trades product, but it is not a master of all of them.  If there is something very 
specific you wish to target, like traffic shaping, look into something more dedicated to the task.  

Don't listen to what the sales people tell you regarding performance.  Every "service" you enable will add 5-10% 
overall resource overhead to the system, so plan your purchase accordingly.  Support from Fortinet has been quite good 
with techs willing to connect directly to your device to troubleshoot, or in our case, Webex into a workstation and 
access the unit that way.

While our concentration is more on the malware end, we are currently looking at more advanced solutions that offer 
something beyond the signature based policy model.  But for general usage and protection, it is a pretty good unit.


Mark Rogowski  CISSP, CISM
IT Security
Technology Solutions Centre
University of Winnipeg
Ph: (204) 786-9034

> > > Allan Nelson <allan.nelson () UTT EDU TT> 11/27/08 11:13 AM >>>
Hello:

We at the University of Trinidad and Tobago are in the process of
evaluating Fortinet's Fortigate security appliance. I would like to know
if other Universities are using this particular appliance and what are
your comments from experience on this effectiveness.  We have looked at
Gartner who has it highly rated and the Fortinet website cites a number
of Universities (http://www.fortinet.com/solutions/education.html) who
have deployed this solution.  Any and all comments would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Allan Nelson
UTT
allan.nelson () utt edu tt