Preface

Fortinet is one of the leading vendors of network security solutions in the world. Its FortiGate family of products is widely used and appreciated and includes solutions optimized for high-end, mid-range, desktop, and virtual scenarios. Such a success means that security professionals, networking experts, and system administrators often have to manage (or at least have to deal with) a FortiGate appliance. The documentation as well as training courses available on the Fortinet knowledge base are of excellent quality. Nevertheless, the first impact with a complex apparatus as the FortiGate, often creates significant difficulties. Getting started with FortiGate has the purpose of introducing the main functionality of the FortiGate appliance, using the latest release available of FortiOS (5.0). Routing, security filters, security policies, tunneling, and high availability are introduced and then demonstrated with practical configuration examples. This way the text provides the reader with an experience as close as possible to what is required in real-world scenarios.