Fortinet
Fortinet's Burnaby campus is home to the company's largest global team, with roughly half of its product managers based at the site. According to Gordon Phillips, Regional Vice President of Western Canada Sales, this means the engineers and architects who set Fortinet's global technology standards are based locally, giving Western Canadian customers direct access to the people building the tools they rely on.Â
That local connection traces back to the company's founding. Robert May, Executive Vice President of Technology and Product Management, notes that many of Fortinet's products were developed in Burnaby, which served as a foundational hub for the company. Bringing a product to market involves coordination between software developers, hardware designers, and R&D teams, with May's group serving as the link between customers and engineering, identifying market needs and working with R&D to address them.Â
The company's flagship product, FortiGate, is a next-generation firewall built to secure a customer's entire IT environment. It protects users from malicious websites and harmful downloads, while its SD-WAN capabilities optimize connectivity between offices and remote users accessing corporate applications. May describes it as providing a security layer for the everyday activities people rely on, whether they're using a phone, checking email, or working with newer AI tools. May's own roots in the region run deep. He graduated from UBC's Computer Science program in 2000, and says the systems architecture and network communication concepts he studied there remain directly relevant to his work at Fortinet today.Â
Fortinet's scale is a significant part of its approach to security. With its tools deployed across more than half of companies globally, the company draws on a large volume of data to inform its threat intelligence. Derek Manky, Chief Security Strategist and Global Vice President of Threat Intelligence, oversees the analysis of trillions of daily signals used to protect customers and disrupt cybercrime activity. Manky notes that Fortinet has applied AI to its security operations for more than 12 years, which he says allows for faster, more proactive protection compared to newer entrants to the space.Â
Manky's work extends beyond monitoring threats. He and his team work to identify the infrastructure behind cybercrime and take it offline through partnerships with law enforcement and other organizations, rather than relying solely on defensive measures. Given that the average ransomware attack costs approximately $4.9 million USD, Manky argues that a modest upfront investment in prevention can significantly reduce a company's financial exposure. Fortinet's turnkey offerings, including SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS), are designed to help businesses secure their operations without hiring additional specialized staff, addressing a skills gap that exists across the cybersecurity industry.  Â
Manky also received his education locally at Burnaby's BCIT Computer Systems Technology program. He credits his education at BCIT with providing the technical foundation for his career, beginning as an analyst over 20 years ago.He also points out that the Burnaby office has grown from an early R&D site into Fortinet's largest research centre and core data centre worldwide.Â
Across the company, the view is that cybersecurity has moved well beyond a narrow IT concern. Phillips notes that a breach can affect a company's brand and reputation as much as its data, and frames security investment as a way to maintainbusiness continuity and protect revenue. He adds that cybersecurity now touches every part of a business, from data protection to maintaining the trust required to grow and scale.Â
As a member of the Burnaby Board of Trade, Fortinet continues to draw on its local roots while serving customers across the region and around the world. To learn more, visit Fortinet.com.Â
