industry network security & computer security founded 2000 founder ceo ken xie cto michael xie headquarters sunnyvale california united states products fortigate utm next generation firewall firewalls antivirus intrusion prevention system antispyware antispam vpn wireless security application control web filtering revenue us 1.01 billion 2015 1 operating income us 14.8 million 2015 1 net income us 8 million 2015 1 total assets us 1.27 billion 2015 1 total equity us 755.38 million 2015 1 number of employees 4 600 website www.fortinet.com fortinet is an american multinational corporation headquartered in sunnyvale california . it develops and markets cybersecurity software appliances and services such as firewalls anti virus intrusion prevention and endpoint security among others . it is the fourth largest network security company by revenue . fortinet was founded in 2000 by brothers ken and michael xie . it raised about 93 million in funding by 2004 and introduced ten fortigate appliances . that same year was the beginning of a recurring patent dispute between fortinet and trend micro . the company went public in 2009 raising 156 million through an initial public offering . throughout the 2000s fortinet diversified its product lines adding products for wireless access points sandboxing and messaging security among others . contents 1 corporate history 1.1 early history 1.2 legal disputes 1.3 further development 1.4 recent history 2 products 2.1 security 2.1.1 fortigate 2.1.2 forticlient 2.1.3 fortidb 2.1.4 fortiguard 2.1.5 fortimail 2.1.6 fortimanager 2.1.7 fortiweb waf 2.1.8 virtual software appliances 2.2 networking and wireless 2.2.1 fortiwifi 2.2.2 application delivery controllers 2.3 fortios 2.4 fortianalyzer 2.5 other 3 operations 4 references 5 further reading 6 external links corporate history edit early history edit fortinet was founded in sunnyvale california in 2000 by brothers ken and michael xie . 2 the founders had previously served in executive positions at netscreen and servgate respectively . 3 the company was initially named appligation inc. then renamed to appsecure in december 2000 and later renamed to fortinet based on the phrase fortified networks . 3 it spent two years in research and development 4 before introducing its first product in 2002 . 2 fortinet raised 13 million in private funding from 2000 to early 2003 . 2 an additional 30 million in financing was raised in august 2003 followed by 50 million in march 2004 reaching a total of 93 million in funding . 5 according to fortinet its revenues grew ten fold from 2002 to 2003 . 6 its first channel program was established in october 2003 . 7 westcon canada started distributing fortigate products in canada in december 2003 which was followed by norwood adam in the uk in february 2004 . 2 the reseller program was re organized in january 2006 and named soc in a box . 2 by 2004 fortinet had offices in asia europe and north america . 4 in october 2005 a study by opennet found that fortinet s appliances were being used for internet censorship in myanmar . fortinet said its products are sold by third party resellers and it respects us embargoes however photographs were found of a fortinet salesperson with burma s prime minister . 8 9 legal disputes edit a german linux programmer from gplviolations.org obtained a preliminary injunction against fortinet s uk subsidiary in april 2005 due to allegations that the company was using encryption to hide its use of linux kernels that are subject to a general public license gpl . the license s terms require disclosure of the source code . 10 11 the following month fortinet agreed to make its source code for gpl licensed elements available upon request modified its licensing terms and made other changes ending the dispute . 12 in may 2004 trend micro filed a legal complaint against fortinet alleging that its antivirus technology infringed trend micro s patents on methods for scanning email and internet traffic . 13 that august the international trade commission ruled against fortinet prohibiting the sale of effected products . fortinet said trend micro s patents were too broad but it complied with the ruling . 14 fortinet and trend micro reached an agreement with undisclosed terms in january 2006 and fortinet modified its antivirus products to avoid trend micro s patents . 15 16 a few years later an attorney from the international trade commission filed an opinion for another case that said he felt the related patents from trend micro were invalid . fortinet made a new legal filing and in december 2010 the us patent and trademark office declared the patents as invalid . 2 17 in december 2013 fortinet sued sophos under allegations that it was poaching fortinet employees and infringing on fortinet patents . 18 19 the legal dispute was settled two years later in mediation with non disclosed terms . 20 further development edit in 2008 fortinet researchers said a facebook widget from zango had tricked more than three million users into downloading malicious spyware under the guise of telling users their secret crush . 21 zango denied the allegations saying their software was opt in . 22 in late 2008 fortinet acquired the database security and auditing intellectual property of iplocks and extended job offers to the company s 28 employees . 23 it acquired the intellectual property and other assets of woven systems an ethernet switching company in august 2009 . 24 according to idc by this time it was the largest unified threat management vendor with a 15.4 percent market share . 25 the company had been growing steadily and became profitable after losing money from 2004 2007 . 26 fortinet was also rising in crn magazine s survey based annual report card arc reaching first place in 2009 . 27 in november 2009 fortinet had an initial public offering . it was planning to raise 52.4 million through the sale of 5.8 million shares . 25 many stockholders also sold their shares simultaneously . 28 just before the first day of trading fortinet increased the share price from 9 to 12.50 and the price increased in the market to 16.62 by the end of the first day of trading raising 156 million in financing . 29 recent history edit by 2010 fortinet had 324 million in annual revenues . 2 that november bloomberg covered rumors that ibm was considering acquiring the company 30 which fortinet denied . 31 32 in december 2012 fortinet acquired xdn formerly known as 3crowd which provided an app hosting service called crowddirector . 33 in 2013 fortinet acquired coyote point an application delivery company for an undisclosed sum . coyote had 1 800 employees and 534 million in annual revenue . 34 35 fortinet made changes to its reseller program in july 2013 in order to provide financing and other options for small managed security service vendors . 36 recently some resellers have complained that fortinet is competing with its own resellers whereas fortinet says it does not do any direct sales . 37 fortinet founded the cyber threat alliance with palo alto networks in 2014 in order to share security threat data across vendors . it was joined by mcafee and symantec later that year . 38 39 in may 2015 fortinet acquired the silicon valley based wi fi hardware company meru networks for 44 million . 40 41 in late 2015 fortinet security researchers demonstrated a fitbit hack that gained access through bluetooth then allowed the hacker into synchronized devices . 42 43 in june 2016 fortinet acquired an it security monitoring and analytics software vendor accelops for about 28 million . 44 according to zdnet the company was best known for its security information and event management siem products products which analyze hardware and software security alerts . 45 products edit fortinet develops and markets it security and networking hardware and software . 46 it is best known for the fortigate family of security appliances which combine many cybersecurity functions . 47 according to a 2015 report by it analyst firm the dell oro group fortinet had an eight percent market share of the it security appliance market by revenue in 2014 up from 2.9 percent in 2012 . 48 this makes it the fourth largest vendor in the industry . 49 according to fortinet its users are 35 % small businesses 28 % enterprises and 37 % large companies . 46 in addition to fortigate security products the company also markets forticlient endpoint security and vpn software ; fortidb a tool for managing security policies and vulnerabilities ; fortiguard antispam software ; fortimail a messaging security product ; fortimanager data center management software ; fortiweb web application firewall software ; fortiwifi a wi fi access point integrated with security features ; and virtual versions of its appliances . the operating system used in all of fortinet s products is called fortios . fortianalyzer software adds logging analysis and reporting features to fortinet products . security updates are made available through the fortiguard subscription service . security edit fortigate edit fortinet s fortigate family of unified threat management physical and virtual appliances include a number of security features like firewalls intrusion prevention web filters and protection from malware or spam . the family includes products for small businesses and branch offices like the fortigate 20 and appliances for large enterprises data centers and internet service providers like the fortigate 5000 . 1 50 it also sells products like the fortigate 5001b which is a next generation firewall ngfw something gartner defines as being a product that combines firewall vpn intrusion prevention and other security features in a single appliance . 51 fortinet s first product was the fortigate 3000 released in october 2002 52 which had a throughput of 3 gigabytes per second gb s . 53 the 5000 family was released two years later . 54 according to the international directory of company histories fortinet s early products for small businesses and branch offices were well received by the industry . 2 a review in pc magazine gave the fortigate 100 network security and vpn appliance five out of five stars 55 though pc magazine gave it only three stars . 56 network magazine said the cost difference between a fortinet appliance and purchasing each security function separately was stunning however it said fortinet s spam tools were not as good as those from specialized anti spam vendors . 57 a lab test by network computing said it blocked 100 % of security threats and was its top choice for bang for the buck but ranked it as a close second to the netscreen isg2000 which it said had slightly better technical performance . 58 the fortigate 3200d tied for first place in a test by nss labs on an overall security effectiveness assessment and was the best performing product in a real world test that mimics a data center environment . 59 in a 2008 comparative review done by crn the publication said the fortigate 1000a was one of the most comprehensive unified threat management appliances . it noted that fortinet built its own appliances using dedicated security semiconductors whereas most vendors use generic oem parts . it ranked the fortigate 1000a in second place behind a watchguard product giving it 4 5 stars in each category that was evaluated . 60 in early 2013 fortinet introduced a family of firewall products for internal networks that relies heavily on special purpose asics . 61 the fortigate virtual appliance was later added to the amazon web services in 2014 . 62 in april 2016 fortinet announced the fortinet security fabric which is intended to allow third party devices to share information with fortinet appliances and software through apis . it also introduced the fortigate 6040e 320gbit s firewall which includes the new cp9 asic that takes on some processing tasks from the main cpu and was used in future fortigate releases . 63 forticlient edit forticlient is an endpoint security product for desktops phones and other devices .