Fortinet has been named New Zealand Network Security Vendor of the Year 2015, by Frost - Sullivan.

The award recognises the commitment of Fortinet's local team and recognises the company's ‘outstanding' performance throughout 2014.

Andrew Milory, Frost- Sullivan Asia Pacific vice president for ICT practice, says New Zealand businesses are confronting the fact that cyber attacks have increased significantly in the last few years.

“A major challenge is that a large portion of New Zealand businesses are not prepared for these cyber attacks,” Milory says. “Coupled with that, many organisations in the country have encouraged employees to bring their own devices to work to increase productivity and employee satisfaction.

Milory says those trends have introduced more threats into Kiwi business networks, which in turn has caused more challenges for businesses to security their network infrastructure as well as their commercially-sensitive digital assets.

“Fortinet has leveraged cutting-edge network security technologies to address these challenges and become a market leader in New Zealand,” he says.

“Fortinet has continued to increase its market share by security contracts and partnering with major organisations in New Zealand,” Milory adds. “Consequently, the company showed strong financial performance with 24% growth in year on year revenue.

Earlier this year Fortinet's international bosses made the decision to have several members of the Kiwi management team take over management of Australia as well, given the impressive performance of the local operations, which clocked up record billings for Q1 2015.

That move saw Jon McGettigan, previously New Zealand and Pacific Islands general manager promoted to managing the Australian operations as well, becoming senior director for Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific. Scott Cowen, previously New Zealand and Pacific Island channel director was also given regional responsibility, adding Australia to his mandate, while Jack Chan also took on Australian responsibility as consulting system engineer for ANZ and Pacific Islands.

McGettigan says the Frost - Sullivan award validates the company's efforts over the past two years.

“In addition to increasing our revenues and customer base, we have added six new sales and technical staff in New Zealand and have appointed a new country manager, Peter Saunders.

The company now employs 77 staff across Australia and New Zealand.

Recent months have seen the company pushing heavily into the software defined networking arena.