Bashar Bashaireh Joins UTM Market Leader to Drive Regional Business Expansion

Middle East; 3 March 2010 - Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT) - a leading network security provider and worldwide leader of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that Bashar Bashaireh has rejoined the company as its Middle East Regional Director. Bashaireh will be responsible for driving Fortinet's aggressive growth plans across the Middle East region through the sales management of an expanded local team and its channel network.

Luca Simonelli, regional vice president at Fortinet, said: "We have seen exceptional growth in the Middle East, especially in penetrating the enterprise, government and service providers markets. It is now critical to further structure our presence and I'm confident that Bashar, with his expertise in the region and Fortinet, will help strengthen our market position and increase business opportunities."

Bashaireh brings more than 18 years of experience in the Middle East market place, where, prior to re-joining Fortinet, he held the position of Secretary General at the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MoICT) of Jordan for a period of two years with direct responsibility for developing the Jordanian ICT sector in collaboration with public and private stakeholders. Before joining Fortinet in 2007, Bashaireh held the positions of Regional Sales Manager at 3Com Middle East and Regional Manager MENA at Cyber Guard Corporation.

"I'm very pleased to be back at Fortinet, a vendor which I believe has a unique position in the network security market and has been able to meet the growing needs of the region,  from the SMB to the enterprise," said Bashaireh. "I am convinced that my market knowledge will help accelerate Fortinet's business success in the region and I look forward to this exciting phase in the growth of the company"

In 2009, while a large majority of IT vendors showed little or no growth, Fortinet further committed to its customer base by expanding its offices at its regional headquarters in Dubai, its Saudi office in Riyadh, and by opening an office in Cairo - covering Egypt, Libya and Levant. The company also doubled its number of sales and support staff to help resellers offer a higher level of technical support.

Fortinet has also rolled out its global partner programme throughout the Middle East, doubling the total number of qualified partners across the region.

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About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) is a worldwide provider of network security appliances and the market leader in unified threat management (UTM). Our products and subscription services provide broad, integrated and high-performance protection against dynamic security threats while simplifying the IT security infrastructure. Our customers include enterprises, service providers and government entities worldwide, including the majority of the 2009 Fortune Global 100. Fortinet's flagship FortiGate product delivers ASIC-accelerated performance and integrates multiple layers of security designed to help protect against application and network threats. Fortinet's broad product line goes beyond UTM to help secure the extended enterprise - from endpoints, to the perimeter and the core, including databases and applications. Fortinet is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with offices around the world.

Copyright © 2010  Fortinet, Inc. All rights reserved. The symbols ® and ™ denote respectively federally registered trademarks and unregistered trademarks of Fortinet, Inc., its subsidiaries and affiliates, including, but not limited to, the following trademarks: Fortinet, FortiGate, FortiGuard, FortiManager, FortiMail, FortiClient, FortiCare, FortiAnalyzer, FortiReporter, FortiOS, FortiASIC, FortiWiFi, FortiSwitch, FortiVoIP, FortiBIOS, FortiLog, FortiResponse, FortiDB, FortiWeb and FortiCarrier. Other trademarks belong to their respective owners. Fortinet has not independently verified statements above attributed to other parties, and Fortinet does not independently endorse any such statements.

Media Contacts
Barbara Maigret
Fortinet
+33 (4) 8987 0552
bmaigret@fortinet.com 

Mita Srinivasan
Market Buzz International (for Fortinet)
+971 4 3625484
mita@themarketbuzz.net 

© Press Release 2010