McAfee and Symantec Join Fortinet and Palo Alto Networks as Co-founders of the Industry's First Cyber Threat Alliance

Groundswell of Industry Collaboration Underscores Concerted Effort to Help Enterprises Combat Advanced Cyber Threats

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Sep 08, 2014, 08:00 ET

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) and Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), both original co-founders of the industry's first cyber threat alliance (see press release issued May 30, 2014), today announced that two new security industry leaders, McAfee and Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), have joined the alliance as co-founders.

The mission of the Cyber Threat Alliance is to drive a coordinated industry effort against cyber adversaries through deep collaboration on threat intelligence and sharing indicators of compromise.

While past industry efforts have often been limited to the exchange of malware samples, this new alliance will provide more actionable threat intelligence from contributing members, including information on zero-day vulnerabilities, botnet command and control (C&C) server information, mobile threats, and indicators of compromise (IoCs) related to advanced persistent threats (APTs), as well as the commonly-shared malware samples. By raising the industry's collective actionable intelligence, alliance participants will be able to deliver greater security for individual customers and organizations.

In addition to evolving the alliance framework and bylaws, co-founders Fortinet, McAfee, Palo Alto Networks and Symantec will each dedicate resources to determine the most effective mechanisms for sharing advanced threat data to foster collaboration amongst all alliance members and make united progress in the fight against sophisticated cyber adversaries.

QUOTES

"Fortinet, along with Palo Alto Networks, welcomes McAfee and Symantec as co-founders to the alliance; the combination of each of these leading technology vendor's observations, insights and solutions will significantly increase the alliance's construct and effectiveness."
– Ken Xie, chairman and CEO of Fortinet
"We must match our adversaries' aggressive drive to innovate with our own deeper commitment to collaborate. It's no longer enough to share and compare yesterday's malware samples. As an industry, we need to understand and be poised to react to the latest complex and multidimensional attacks of today and tomorrow. This cyber alliance provides a critical framework for educating each other on the infrastructure and evolving tactics behind these attacks."
– Vincent Weafer, senior vice president for McAfee Labs, part of Intel Security
"The growing participation by industry leaders in the alliance provides great benefits for all the member companies' customers as shared intelligence and collaboration is instrumental in combating today's most sophisticated cyber criminals. This is a clear example of customer interests being more important than any individual company's interests."
– Mark McLaughlin, CEO and president at Palo Alto Networks
"Cyber security breaches are getting larger, more costly and more frequent. Symantec is pleased to be a founding member of the Cyber Threat Alliance, which commits to sharing information about advanced attacks. By working together to thwart the next generation of cyber attacks, we will be more effective in fighting to keep the Internet safe for users around the world."
– Adam Bromwich, vice president of Security Technology and Response at Symantec

For more information on the cyber alliance and its members, visit: www.cyberthreatalliance.org.

About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) helps protect networks, users and data from continually evolving threats. As a global leader in high-performance network security, we enable businesses and governments to consolidate and integrate stand-alone technologies without suffering performance penalties. Unlike costly, inflexible and low-performance alternatives, Fortinet solutions empower customers to embrace new technologies and business opportunities while protecting essential systems and content. Learn more at www.fortinet.com

About Palo Alto Networks
Palo Alto Networks is leading a new era in cybersecurity by protecting thousands of enterprise, government, and service provider networks from cyber threats. Unlike fragmented legacy products, our security platform safely enables business operations and delivers protection based on what matters most in today's dynamic computing environments: applications, users, and content. Find out more at www.paloaltonetworks.com

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SOURCE Palo Alto Networks