“For the past two decades, Fortinet has been at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation. Environmentally sustainable innovation is also at the heart of our efforts to make the world a safer and more sustainable place to live and work. We feel it is our corporate obligation to continue to reduce our products’ environmental footprint and to use responsible business practises in our everyday operations. Our commitment is exemplified by the unveiling of our 2030 net-zero aim and our new net-zero corporate headquarters.” (fortigate firewall)
Ken Xie, Founder, Chairman of the Board, and CEO at Fortinet(fortigate firewall)
The latest UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) closed with calls for states to return with more stringent pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing the climate catastrophe would require worldwide cooperation — not just from governments and public bodies, but also from businesses.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, greenhouse gas emissions decreased slightly (1.7 percent) from 2018 and 2019, owing in part to the electric power sector’s continuous move from coal to natural gas and renewables. While this is a beginning in the right direction, companies must act more forcefully now to achieve long-term and substantial change.
We think it is our responsibility at Fortinet to make the world a safer and more sustainable place. As part of our efforts, we’ve made a public commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 — in terms of emissions from the facilities we own throughout the world. We’re working toward this objective through a variety of initiatives aimed at lowering emissions, increasing efficiency, and establishing accountability.
Sunnyvale is working to make its headquarters more environmentally friendly. (fortigate firewall)
We recently completed our new Sunnyvale headquarters complex, which was built to the highest green standards. The 172,000-square-foot structure will use 30% less energy than a typical structure and save 76,600 gallons of water per year. With California still suffering from unprecedented droughts, limiting water use must be a primary priority for all people and businesses in the state.
Other initiatives we’ve made to make our new headquarters more ecologically friendly include installing energy-saving features such as radiant cooling, onsite solar-powered EV charging stations, and bike racks. Solar panels put atop the parking garage will assist our headquarters become entirely energy self-sufficient and create additional power to balance the energy use of our other North American locations. Our new facility is on schedule to earn LEED-Gold certification, and we’ll make sure that any new construction follows LEED or other green building standards, and that new locations run entirely on renewable energy.
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Ensure that accountability and progress are met.
We also realise that it’s all too simple for a firm to make these declarations and then fail to follow through on them. These aren’t just words on a page. Fortinet has been measuring its Scope 1 and 2 emissions for the past two years (those which directly occur from sources we control or own, and the indirect emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, heat or cooling.) In 2022, we will publish our first sustainability report to hold ourselves accountable.
Furthermore, we have the highest degree of governance in place thanks to the Fortinet Board of Directors’ Social Responsibility Committee, which is responsible for evaluating the company’s sustainability and corporate social responsibility objectives, strategy, and risks.
Building on a history of accomplishments
Although the facility in Sunnyvale is new, our attempts to reduce our environmental impact are not. From an operational and technological standpoint, this has always been central to Fortinet’s guiding goal. We’ve been working on developing devices that utilise less energy at client sites for almost two decades. Fortinet manufactures some of the world’s most energy-efficient security products to assist our clients and partners in making their own efforts to reduce their carbon footprint.
From the design stage through the whole product lifespan, environmental sustainability is a primary emphasis. This is including product energy consumption and efficiency, ease of reuse/recycling, and correct disposal at the end of life. This included packaging: we follow internationally recognised compliance standards, such as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Conflict Minerals Rule, and we’re working with our contract manufacturers to eradicate PVC from packaging.
Our sophisticated security solutions use up to three times less energy than standard appliances. At the same time, they are providing 15 times the performance. Besides, they are reducing the environmental impact of networks, including data centres (which consume 2 percent of energy worldwide).
Dedicated to making the world a safer and more sustainable environment
Environmental programmes can lay a heavy burden on individual customers. Yes, we can recycle at home, and we should. Yes, we should definitely take shorter showers and invest in more energy-saving gadgets. These are all critical steps that we can all take, just as everyone has a role to play in cybersecurity by practising good cyber hygiene. However, corporations and industries across all sectors, not individuals, are the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. We continue to seek for ways to reduce our environmental impact at Fortinet. The technology industry, particularly Silicon Valley, has been at the forefront of so many innovations; it’s past time we put our combined inventiveness and drive to work in the battle against climate change as well.
Source: fortigate firewall
