Fortinet has once again been honored with the Red Dot Product Design Award this year for the FortiGate Rugged series (FGR-50G-5G and FGR-70G-5G)**. **Designed for operational technology (OT) and critical infrastructure sectors, the FortiGate Rugged series combines fanless industrial design, integrated 5G connectivity, and Fortinet’s purpose-built ASIC technology to deliver security and performance where reliability matters most. This award underscores Fortinet’s long-standing commitment to innovation, which combines advanced engineering precision with design excellence, bringing trusted security to the industrial edge.
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Fortinet has once again been honored with the Red Dot Product Design Award this year for the FortiGate Rugged series (FGR-50G-5G and FGR-70G-5G)**. **Designed for operational technology (OT) and critical infrastructure sectors, the FortiGate Rugged series combines fanless industrial design, integrated 5G connectivity, and Fortinet’s purpose-built ASIC technology to deliver security and performance where reliability matters most. This award underscores Fortinet’s long-standing commitment to innovation, which combines advanced engineering precision with design excellence, bringing trusted security to the industrial edge.
The Red Dot Award for Product Design is one of the most prestigious honors for innovation and craftsmanship. Each year, an international jury of designers, engineers, and academic experts evaluates thousands of submissions across industries ranging from consumer electronics to purpose-built appliances. Only a small percentage earn the coveted Red Dot distinction, which signifies a clear standard of excellence in both form and function.
This recognition follows Fortinet’s continued success at the Red Dot Awards (we also earned the 2024 Red Dot Design Award for the FGR-70G-5G-DUAL) and reinforces the company’s position as a design-driven technology leader whose products are defined by precision and trust, rather than excess.
Built for the Harshest Conditions
The FortiGate Rugged series is designed for locations where reliability is non-negotiable, such as remote substations, manufacturing plants, transportation systems, and utility control centers where environmental conditions are unpredictable and uptime is critical.
Each appliance in the series is engineered to operate fanlessly using a carefully sculpted aluminum heat sink to dissipate heat efficiently without introducing moving parts. This not only reduces maintenance and dust intrusion but also creates a distinctive profile that balances strength with aesthetic clarity. The seamless enclosure protects against shock, vibration, and moisture, while maintaining a minimal, functional appearance that conveys reliability and purpose.
Powered by Fortinet’s purpose-built FortiASIC processors, the FortiGate Rugged series delivers consistent, low-latency performance for next-generation firewalling, SD-WAN, VPN, and AI-driven threat detection. This ensures that OT networks can achieve the same level of inspection and control found in enterprise networks, without sacrificing resilience or simplicity in the field.
The Red Dot jury noted that the FortiGate Rugged series “provides organisations with secure connectivity even in demanding conditions and impresses with its purpose-driven design.”
From Concept to Precision
The development of the FortiGate Rugged series was guided by a multi-phase design methodology that married thermal science with structural integrity.
During the P1 phase, the Fortinet design team assessed dimensions, constraints, and component placement to preserve the balance between performance and space efficiency. The P2 phase focused on heat-transfer modeling and laboratory validation, ensuring that thermal requirements were met before finalizing the external form. Once hardware design was locked, the P3 phase introduced rigorous third-party certification to validate durability under impact, vibration, altitude, and high-voltage testing.
Through every step, Fortinet’s engineering and product management teams worked in tandem to align physical form with the company’s security vision: protecting critical infrastructure through intelligence, integration, and trust.
“Our goal was to bring the same trusted Fortinet security to the field—to substations, manufacturing floors, and transportation systems—without compromise,” says Robert May, executive vice President, technology and product management at Fortinet. “This recognition* *underscores the precision and collaboration that went into achieving both resilience and elegance in a single design.”
That philosophy is visible in the smallest details, from the tactile quality of the enclosure to the clean geometry of the heat sink fins. Every surface is intentional, and every material is chosen to withstand the realities of industrial deployment while still embodying Fortinet’s design ethos of strength through simplicity.
Design as a Reflection of Trust
OT organizations face unique pressures, including critically deployed legacy systems, remote locations, and limited visibility across their increasingly complex and interconnected environments. The FortiGate Rugged series was conceived as a bridge between enterprise-grade cybersecurity and operational resilience, built to thrive where other devices degrade.
By combining performance, protection, and endurance, the FortiGate Rugged series transforms design into an expression of reliability. Its external form projects the same sense of assurance that Fortinet’s customers expect from its technology stack: reliability reinforced through transparency, certification, and visible craftsmanship.
“The design had to communicate trust immediately,” explains May. “Every curve and material choice contributes to that. We wanted engineers and operators to feel confident in the product before they even power it on.”
This level of intentionality has become a hallmark of Fortinet’s industrial design process: aesthetics not merely as decoration, but as a visual embodiment of purpose.
Extending Security to the Industrial Edge
As digital transformation accelerates in energy, manufacturing, and transportation sectors, the need for secure connectivity at the edge continues to intensify. Many of these sites now support a growing number of sensors, connected machines, and mobile endpoints, all of which expand the potential attack surface.
The FortiGate Rugged series brings the full strength of the Fortinet OT Security Platform—an extension of the Fortinet Security Fabric—to the industrial edge. It also integrates seamlessly with FortiManager and FortiAnalyzer, providing centralized policy enforcement, network analytics, and AI-driven visibility across distributed IT and OT networks. This alignment enables operators to manage remote assets, respond to threats in real time, and maintain compliance without requiring separate tools or consoles.