Hutchison 3G Austria Deploys Fortinet to Secure its Mobile Email Services

FortiMail protects more than 577,000 Email Accounts and Multimedia Services from Spam and Viruses

MALAYSIA, 28 October 2008 - Fortinet - the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions - today announced that Hutchison 3G (H3G) Austria has deployed Fortinet's FortiMail multi-layered email security platform and FortiGuard Antivirus and Antispam Services to protect the email accounts and multimedia messaging services (MMS) provided to its employees and 577,000 mobile subscribers. H3G Austria, the market leader for mobile multimedia services in Austria, selected Fortinet's solution for its high levels of flexibility and ease-of-use as well as its attractive price/performance ratio.

When H3G Austria was informed that its current anti-spam solution was reaching end of life, it was faced with the challenge of finding a new solution that would help ensure that Service Level Agreements (SLA) with its customers would still be met. With a typical rate of three infected emails per second, an effective solution for catching malicious content was essential to help ensure the high performance of the operator's Exchange servers and maintain SLAs. In addition, with a fast growing volume of email traffic, H3G needed a scalable solution.

After carrying out a thorough analysis of various anti-spam solutions, the company decided to place Fortinet's FortiMail multi-layered email security platform in an extensive test scenario. H3G tested the capacity of Fortinet's security platform to deal with a large amount of emails containing complex malware to mirror the increased sophistication of Internet threats. After four months of testing by H3G, FortiMail met all H3G Austria requirements, catching around 99% of spam and viruses according to H3G's tests.

"Not only is the volume of email traffic rising but with it, the complexity of malware with the presence of blended threats combining spam, viruses, worms and spyware. To help ensure optimum service and security for our customers, we needed an effective multi-layered solution that combined antivirus, anti-spam and anti-spyware technologies in one appliance," said Günther Fischer, head of Product and Service Enabler for the IT & Networks business unit at H3G Austria. "FortiMail met our performance requirements while providing ease-of-use and management to our IT team which is essential as we do not have the time or resources to deploy and maintain separate point solutions."

In addition to providing high levels of security performance and manageability, FortiMail was the only solution on the market that offered a per-system licensing model. This was a decisive factor for H3G Austria, which provides all its new customers with an email account and enjoys a fast-growing number of mobile subscribers.

H3G Austria has deployed two FortiMail-2000A appliances in high availability mode for antivirus and anti-spam protection as well as MMS scanning. The FortiMail appliance acts as a gateway in front of the operator's Exchange server, stopping spam and viruses before they enter the network. FortiMail-2000A is a multi-layered email security platform that removes unwanted spam and provides maximum protection for blended email-related threats. FortiMail enables enterprises to increase productivity by reducing unwanted spam messages and facilitates regulatory compliance through advanced email content archiving and routing.

"The increased adoption of email and multimedia services represent a big opportunity for cybercriminals, creating new security challenges for mobile operators," said Patrice Perche, Fortinet's EMEA vice president. "In a very competitive market, telcos must address those risks while controlling their costs. The high performance, flexibility and cost-effectiveness of our FortiMail appliance make it a perfect solution for mobile operators. With H3G Austria, we are pleased to increase our footprint in one of the world's largest telco carriers."

Fortinet offers FortiMail updates through the FortiGuard Antispam and Antivirus Subscription Services, which leverage Fortinet's reputation database and signatures to identify and block spam, phishing attempts, viruses, spyware and other email-borne threats and deliver automatic real-time updates to FortiMail appliances located around the world.