LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT IN CYBER
F
or three decades , Ken Xie has been committed to bolstering global cyber defences .
As the Founder , Chairman and CEO of leading cybersecurity company Fortinet , he is consistently celebrated for being a successful industry expert and entrepreneur . He has been at the helm of the organisation since it was founded in 2000 and has successfully built a vast portfolio of solutions across network , infrastructure , edge and the cloud .
The organisation serves roughly 70 % of Fortune 100 companies and governments around the world . Ken has ensured that Fortinet maintains a clear and structured approach to security and networking , which in turn has helped businesses better protect their networks across the entire attack surface .
As of 2024 , his net worth is roughly US $ 5.2bn .
A garage in Palo Alto : the birth of a cyber mogul Born and raised in the People ’ s Republic of China to academic parents , Ken graduated from Tsinghua University with both a Bachelor ’ s and a Master ’ s degree in Electrical Engineering . He then chose to go to the US for further education at Stanford University , which led him to build a life there .
He explained in a 2017 interview with Forbes that his parents always hoped that , given his interest in networks , that he would return to China to be a professor . However , this was not to be the case .
“ Stanford is connected to companies in the Bay Area like Google , Yahoo and Sun Microsystems ,” Ken told Forbes . “ I learned about entrepreneurship , which was not something I had been exposed to in China in college . I found it exciting .”
In 1993 , Ken founded a network security company called Systems Integration Solutions ( SIS ), a software firewall company . Through this , he built the first ASIC-based firewall and VPN alliance in his garage in Palo Alto , California , in 1996 .
The same year he founded NetScreen Technologies . As an online security firm , the company developed the first dedicated hardware systems for high-performance firewalls and VPNs . Its success , alongside co-founders Yan Ke and Feng Deng , led the company to be acquired later by Juniper Networks for US $ 4bn .
Ken also told Forbes : “ Being an entrepreneur fits me because I like learning something new every day . I also enjoy the areas of network security and internet security , which is why all three of my companies have been in this space . “ Each time we try to do better .”
30 October 2024