Fortinet FortiGate 3600A

Score: 3.17

Editor’s note: This is a summary of our testing of this product, for a full rundown of how it fared in our testing across 10 UTM categories, please see our full coverage.

Fortinet’s FortiGate 3600A is in the midrange of Fortinet’s broad UTM firewall product line, which starts at SOHO devices and moves its way up to a carrier-sized chassis. Fortinet’s strength lies in its hardware-acceleration technology. While many other firewall vendors are jumping to designs that maximize the use of off-the-shelf components, Fortinet continues to develop custom silicon both in the network processor and content analysis parts of its products. Not every product has the same level of acceleration technology, but the 3600A is certainly a winner when it comes to high-speed virus scanning.

The challenge Fortinet has had, and continues to have in the version of the product we evaluated, is its ability to bring the FortiGate 3600A to the level where it can compete successfully in the enterprise. However, we found the FortiGate 3600A’s simplistic management interface unsuitable for enterprise configuration tasks.