Mumbai: Fortinet, a leader in 'unified threat management' (UTM) systems and the only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based antivirus firewall systems for real-time network protection, has announced the deployment of Fortinet UTM solutions at Compton Greaves.

The deployment was started in November 2004, and was undertaken by IBM Global Services. Compton Greaves needed to provide security to an employee intranet, extranets that interfaced with its enterprise SAP application, and secure remote access to ERP applications through VPNs for users in different cities and regions. Its existing Linux-based firewall offered some basic functionality, but for the stringent new IT requirements, the Linux firewall was insufficiently secure.

Shirish Pai, assistant manager, IT, Compton Greaves in Mumbai, says, "We had replaced our firewall with that of Fortinet's to augment our security infrastructure. We implemented additional DMZ's behind the firewall, and deployed anti-virus capabilities at the gateway, and setup the state-of-the-art intrusion detection function."

"It was almost a plug and play deployment. The firewall was up and running in only four hours, including defining the policies. Deploying the firewall was as easy as a firewall could get. Even with the entire corporate-wide network data flowing through the firewall, the switchover time between the existing and the new Fortinet's one took not more than 45 minutes," says Vijay Jayaraman, network consultant, IBM Global Services.