User:JasmineLozanoFortinet/sandbox

Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It develops and sells cybersecurity solutions, including but not limited to physical products such as firewalls, plus software and services such as anti-virus protection, intrusion prevention systems, threat research, as well as cloud and endpoint security components.

Founded in 2000, the company went public in 2009 and has since acquired several other companies.

Early history
Ken Xie and Michael Xie founded Appligation, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA in 2000. Previously, Ken Xie co-founded and led NetScreen which was acquired by Juniper Networks for $3.63 billion in stock. Michael Xie had served as Vice President of Engineering for ServGate Technologies. Appligation, Inc. was renamed as ApScure, Inc., then FortiNet, Inc., and finally to Fortinet, Inc. in 2003 based on the phrase "Fortified Networks". The company's early focus was on the unified threat management market.

Fortinet introduced its first product, FortiGate, a physical firewall, in 2002. The company acquired database security and auditing company IPLocks in 2008 and the intellectual property and assets of Ethernet switching company Woven Systems in 2009.

Fortinet became profitable in the third quarter of 2008. The company went public with an IPO in November 2009. Media reports show 12.6 million new and existing shares were sold, and the company raised $156 million in new capital on the first day of trading.

Growth and expansion
By 2010, Fortinet had $324 million in annual revenues and held the largest share of the unified threat management market according to market research firm IDC.

Fortinet acquired app-hosting service XDN (formerly known as 3Crowd) in December 2012, Coyote Point in 2013, Wi-Fi hardware company Meru Networks in 2015. , and IT security, monitoring and analytics software vendor, AccelOps in June 2016.

In a lawsuit filed in December 2013 against Sophos, the company alleged its rival had violated an anti-poaching agreement with a former executive. The case was settled in 2015.

Fortinet acquired access control and IoT security solutions provider Bradford Networks in June 2018. In October the company acquired threat analytics company ZoneFox.

Also in 2017, Fortinet launched Fortinet Federal, a cybersecurity products subsidiary. Fortinet has received security effectiveness certifications through NSS Labs.

Fortinet acquired enSilo and CyberSponse in 2019, and SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) cloud provider OPAQ Networks in 2020.

Training Initiatives
Fortinet launched a technical certification program called the Network Security Expert (NSE) program in July 2014.

In March 2016, the company added its Network Security Academy to help fill open cyber security jobs in the U.S. Fortinet donated equipment and provided information to universities to help train cybersecurity students. Later, Fortinet set up FortiVet to recruit military veterans for cybersecurity jobs.

Fortinet announced the Training Advancement Agenda in April 2021, with the goal of increasing cyber skills training for employers and to help close the cyber skills gap for women.

In September 2021, Fortinet pledged to train 1 million people in support of President Joe Biden's call to action to American technology companies to address the talent shortage in cybersecurity.

IPR and Licensing
In May 2004, Trend Micro filed a patent infringement complaint against Fortinet. The International Trade Commission initially ruled against Fortinet, but the patents at the center of the dispute were declared invalid in 2010.

A German court issued a preliminary injunction in April 2005 against Fortinet's UK subsidiary in relation to source code for its GPL-licensed elements. A month later Fortinet agreed to make the source code available upon request.

In 2005, an OpenNet study suggested that Myanmar, then under American sanctions, had begun using Fortinet's FortiGuard system for internet censorship. Fortinet stated that their products are sold by third party resellers, and that they acknowledged US embargoes.

In 2013 Fortinet and FireEye filed complaints against each other alleging patent infringement. The companies reached an agreement and all claims were dismissed in 2015.

In September 2019, Fortinet settled a Department of Justice investigation and lawsuit, and terminated an employee for violating company policy in selling mislabeled Chinese-made equipment to U.S. government end-users.

Recognition
According to IDC, by November 2009 Fortinet held over 15 percent of the unified threat management market. Also in 2009, CRN Magazine's survey-based annual report card placed Fortinet first in network security hardware, up from seventh in 2007.

Gartner, a research and consulting firm, has ranked Fortinet within the top three companies in its Magic Quadrant for enterprise network firewalls, which measures market trends and direction.

FortiGate SD-WAN was included in the Challenger category of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure in 2018, joining the Leader category in 2020.

In January 2019, Fortinet and founder Ken Xie were invited to the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. By that year, Gartner reported Fortinet had 21,000 WAN edge customers. And Fortinet's FortiGate SD-WAN and Next Generation Firewall received a "Recommended" rating from NSS Labs.

That year, BT Security selected Fortinet and other Threat Alliance members as Critical Partners.

In 2020, CRN chose FortiOS 6.4 as winner in its Security-Network category for the Tech Innovator Awards.

In 2021, NetworkWorld included Fortinet in its list of 10 “most powerful” companies in enterprise networking.

Products
Fortinet released its first product, FortiGate, a firewall, in 2002, followed by anti-spam and anti-virus software. FortiGate was the first company to use application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) architecture in a firewall device. The company integrates ASICs in multiple products.

The FortiGate was initially a physical, rack-mounted product but the device software later became available as a virtual appliance that could run on virtualization platforms such as VMware vSphere.

By 2010 Fortinet had merged its network security offerings, including firewalls, anti-spam and anti-virus software, into one product.

In April 2016, Fortinet began building its Security Fabric architecture so multiple network security products could communicate as one platform. The company added Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) products later that year. And in September 2016 the company announced it would integrate the SIEM products with the security systems of other vendors.

Fortinet added switches, access points, analyzers, sandboxes and cloud capabilities to the Security Fabric in 2017.

The company launched a proprietary SD-WAN service, FortiGate SD-WAN, in July 2018. Later that same year, Fortinet released FortiGuard (AI) to better detect new and unknown threats, and also added enhanced centralized management and cloud capabilities to the FortiOS security operating system.

In February 2020, Fortinet released FortiAI, a threat-detection program that uses artificial intelligence. In July 2020, Fortinet launched multi-cloud SD-WAN. In 2021, the company integrated Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) into its SD-WAN offering.

As of 2021, the FortiGate line of firewalls is and remains the company's main product line, accounting for most of its gross revenue.

Research
As of 2021, Fortinet has been awarded over 600 patents.

In 2005, Fortinet created the FortiGuard Labs internal security research team.

In 2008, Fortinet researchers sent a report to Facebook highlighting a widget from Zango that appeared to be tricking users into downloading spyware. By 2014, Fortinet had four research and development centers in Asia, as well as others in the US, Canada and France. By 2014, Fortinet had four research and development centers in Asia, as well as others in the US, Canada and France.

In March 2014, Fortinet co-founded the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA) with Palo Alto Networks in order to share security threat data across vendors. McAfee and Symantec joined the CTA later that year. In 2015, the CTA published a white paper on the CryptoWall ransomware, which detailed how attackers obtained $325 million through ransoms paid by victims to regain access to their files.

In April 2015, Fortinet provided threat intelligence to Interpol in order to help apprehend the ringleader of several online scams based in Nigeria. The scams, which resulted in compromise of business emails and CEO fraud, had cost one business over $15 million.

In March 2016, Fortinet and Cisco joined NATO in a data-sharing agreement to improve their information security capabilities.

In January 2017, Fortinet worked with Interpol to conduct an investigation into web security in several southeast Asian countries. The investigation identified compromised websites, including government-operated web servers. Later that month, Fortinet researchers discovered a spyware that scammed victims by impersonating the IRS. Also in 2017, researchers helped identify malware, called Rootnik, and ransomware, called MacRansom, that targeted Android and MacOS systems respectively.

In 2018, Fortinet entered into an information-sharing agreement with Interpol.