Fortinet establishes R&D lab in Singapore

Fortinet is setting up a research and development (R&D) lab in Singapore to provide global threat intelligence and emergency threat response to its customers. 

To be located at the IT security vendor's local office, which also serves as its Asia-Pacific headquarters, the lab will run research efforts in network security and support seven such facilities worldwide, including its FortiGuard Labs. Singapore is the fourth R&D lab in Asia where there are also research centers in Beijing, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur, and the others are housed in the U.S., Canada, and France.

Fortinet will also be hiring a team in Singapore as part of the plan, which will include skillsets in technical support, marketing, finance, and legal, it said in a statement Wednesday. The Sunnyvale, California-based vendor currently has more than 200 researchers stationed in its FortiGuard Labs and it expects its Singapore facility to support its growth in the region.

According to the security vendor, its Asia-Pacific billings climbed 22 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2014, while its global growth rate was 33 percent. The company reported a 15 percent revenue growth last year hitting US$615 million.

Fortinet Founder, President, and CTO Michael Xie said in the statement: "The Singapore government's vision to make the republic a cybersecurity business and research hub drew us to set up an R&D base here. The abundance of well-trained IT professionals here gives us ready access to a deep talent pool, while the country's strong cybersecurity ecosystem and regional hub status gives us synergy and immediate connectivity to fast growing Asia-Pacific markets."

The Singapore government on Tuesday announced plans to bolster its IT security monitoring capabilities with a new Monitoring and Operations Control Center as well as appoint chief information security officers, in a bid to better deal with increasing cyberattacks in the country and across the globe.