Whenever you join the Wi-Fi in an office, a hotel or a hospital, your data passes through equipment you never see. In a cupboard or a back room, a small box decides what may enter the network and what must stay out.
Very often that box is a FortiGate, a firewall made by Fortinet. Banks, retailers and governments around the world rely on these devices to guard their networks. Most travelers have passed through one without knowing it.
Fortinet sells each box only once. Afterwards, the customer usually keeps paying, year after year, for the updates that teach the box to recognize new attacks, and for help when something goes wrong. Lately, companies seem to have been buying more of these boxes than before. Will today's rush for new boxes turn into payments that last?
