'Mobile devices are increasingly becoming the target of attacks'

Tell us about Fortinet's approach to managing security. How would you differentiate yourself from the others?

Fortinet was created on the vision of integrated security as the way to increase protection and control, while optimizing performance, simplifying management and reducing costs. We have pursued that vision for the last 11 years by continuing to innovate on our FortiGate platform and enriching our solution portfolio with products that provide protection at and around the gateway. Our technology has been developed fully in-house from the very beginning and the company has total control over the design of our products. We have been awarded more than 80 patents and have more product certifications than any other security appliance company, which demonstrate the company's ability to consolidate multiple security technologies into a single device while still meeting the highest standards of performance and accuracy.

With enterprise becoming more and more connected, the need for network security seems to be increasing...

Yes, threats can enter the organization's network from common applications like email and web browsers as well as the latest social networking tools. Today's threats require complete content protection, which is more than simply identifying applications and allowing or denying the traffic. It is the application control coupled with identity-based policy enforcement of all content. Fortinet's unified threat management solutions provide the visibility corporations need to detect hidden threats within legitimate content, even from trusted sources and authorized applications. This means they can allow new applications into their network, but automatically block any malicious content or behavior.

There is a constant debate between 'unified threat management' and 'best-of-breed' approach? Do you see either side coming out the winner in the near term?

Traditionally, organisations use a point solution to protect themselves against each type of threat. Such standalone or “best-of-breed”, security strategy often consumes huge amounts of money, resource and management time. Disparate security devices and operating systems come with multiple maintenance and support contracts, multiple upgrade and replacement schedules, multiple licensing obligations, multiple training programs and management resources. All of these add to the cost and complexity of an organisation's security infrastructure and can have serious negative impact on up-time, availability and performance.

More firms are realising these disadvantages and are migrating to consolidated security platforms or UTM devices to reduce network complexity, switch Capex to Opex, and increase the efficiency of their security operations. The fact that the various security functionalities within a UTM appliance are produced by one vendor typically also means better integration between these technologies.