Fortinet has announced the company's FortiMail messaging security appliances have received certification for Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 2 (EAL 2+). The certification process provides a third-party evaluation service for determining the trustworthiness of information technology security products, which is fundamentally important to the company's enterprise and government customers.

Common Criteria evaluations involve formal rigorous analysis and testing to examine security aspects of a product or system. Extensive testing activities involve a comprehensive and formally repeatable process, confirming that the security product functions as claimed by the manufacturer. Security weaknesses and potential vulnerabilities are specifically examined during an evaluation.

FortiMail is a specialized messaging security system that provides multi-layered protection against blended threats comprised of spam, viruses, worms and malware. FortiMail implements a customized operating system that cleans emails through corresponding FortiMail antispam and antivirus engines. Its inbound filtering engine is designed to block spam and malware before it can clog a network and affect users. Its outbound inspection technology is designed to prevent outbound spam or malware from causing other antispam gateways to blacklist users. FortiMail's dynamic and static user blocking and heuristics provides granular control over policies and users. The high-performance threat filtering technology delivered by the FortiMail appliances processes and filters messages in real time.

"Common Criteria EAL 2+ is a critical certification for Fortinet, especially as the company continues to make inroads with FortiMail in the large enterprise and government markets," said Michael Xie, founder, CTO and vice president of engineering at Fortinet. "With this EAL 2+ certification for our messaging security technology, we're confident that we've further shown our commitment to providing high quality, highly secure solutions for our customers, as FortiMail now joins our FortiGate and FortiOS technologies in holding Common Criteria certification."

The Common Criteria for IT Security Evaluations, also known as ISO standard 15408, was developed by the national security organizations of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and The Netherlands. It provides a broad range of evaluation criteria for many types of commercial and nationally-sensitive government-use IT security products. EAL 4+ is the highest mutually recognized certification level.

"We found FortiMail to be straightforward to configure, use and integrate into a typical corporate network," said Erin Connor, Director of EWA-Canada's Common Criteria testing lab. "In addition, we found FortiMail is supported by comprehensive installation and administrative guidance as well as an exhaustive Command Line Interface guide. With this EAL 2+ certification, Fortinet has once again demonstrated its commitment to providing products for their clients that meet rigorous international standards for IT security."

FortiMail appliances deliver proven, powerful messaging security for any size organization, from small businesses to carriers, service providers and large enterprises. Purpose-built for the most demanding messaging systems, the FortiMail appliances utilize Fortinet's years of experience in protecting networks against spam, malware, and other message-borne threats.