Fortinet the global leader in high-performance cyber security solutions, today introduced the Fortinet Network Security Academy (FNSA). The FNSA is designed to develop and train action-oriented cybersecurity experts to manage new and advanced threats on the horizon. 

• The Academy is designed to provide industry-recognized Fortinet training and certification opportunities to students around the world.
• Students are prepared at international FNSA sites for success in a career in network security, obtaining both the theoretical lectures and hands-on laboratory practice needed to achieve a Fortinet certification.
• Seven organizations from the United States, Canada, and EMEA have joined the Academy now, with 20 additional global FNSA sites expected to open within the next quarter. 

Ken Xie, founder, chairman of the board and chief executive officer at Fortinet:
“It’s no secret that security threats are increasing and impacting organizations in all industries, of all sizes, worldwide. Current estimates show up to one million cybersecurity job openings with demand expected to rise to 6 million globally by 2019. We are partnering with organizations around the globe, in an innovative way, to help fill the pipeline of cybersecurity experts needed to manage and thwart increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.”

Fortinet Network Security Academy Designed to Shape Future of Cybersecurity Workforce
Multiple studies demonstrate the cybersecurity labor shortage and the drastic need for additional experts, highlighting current job postings and the thousands of open positions around the world.

British insurance company Lloyd’s estimated that cyberattacks cost businesses as much as $400 billion a year. The key verticals under attack include healthcare, financial services, education and technology companies with the top threats including malware, botnets and application exploits. Educational institutions, who represent 27.4 percent of all attack events in the recent report from Fortinet’s Cyber Threat Assessment Program, are the second largest at-risk vertical industry.

FNSA was created to address the international shortage of cybersecurity experts and to build a workforce skilled in all aspects of Fortinet’s end-to-end network security fabric who will be recognized in the industry among an elite group of security professionals. From code to client to cloud, the Academy brings the training and certification opportunities previously only offered to Fortinet customers and partners to educational institutions, non-profit organizations and veterans programs. Training for faculty is free of charge for these organizations, arming the professors with the skills required to teach the program to students who will learn how to protect global organizations from cyber threats.

Organizations Around the Globe Have Joined the Fortinet Network Security Academy
Organizations around the world are seeing the benefits of cybersecurity training for their students. In the U.S., Cape Coral Technical College in Florida, Per Scholas, a national non-profit providing IT skills training with locations in Atlanta, New York, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; and Washington, D.C. and The Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University in New York have all become Academy sites. Additional Academy sites include Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada; Willis College in Ottawa, Canada; and HTL Rennweg in Austria. Twenty additional organizations are expected to become Academy sites within the next quarter.

Fortinet sponsors the training content and examinations for each Academy site, along with supporting instructor preparation. Academy sites offering the training and certification courses provide the lab environment (virtual or hardware) and instructors to deliver the program content.

For more information about the Fortinet Network Security Academy, or to apply to become an Academy site, visit www.fortinet.com or email academy@fortinet.com.