Fortinet hires Fortna to lead federal arm

Silicon Valley cybersecurity company Fortinet has hired two-decade public sector market veteran Bob Fortna as president of the federal business.

First unveiled in May, Fortinet Federal is a standalone subsidiary of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company with its own board of directors and executive team.

Fortinet launched the unit so it could specialize in the federal marketplace as a target market for its cyber products.

Fortna joined Fortinet over the summer, a company spokesperson told Washington Technology. His career prior to Fortinet includes executive roles at Juniper Networks, the former Enterasys Networks, Avaya, the former Nortel Networks and IBM.

More recently, he was vice president of the federal defense sector at Juniper. Before Fortinet, he led the federal sector at Enterasys. Prior to Enterasys, he held the same role at Avaya and before that at Nortel.