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The value of the multipurpose security appliance, according to the vendors selling them and their customers, derives from the simplicity of managing a single device instead of several. Nevertheless, businesses deploying UTM appliances generally do so at the point of Internet access at corporate headquarters and branch offices. Most vendors see their UTM products deployed at the Internet gateway, though Mike Jones, Cisco's senior product manager for ASA and the PIX firewall, says "it's no longer about protecting just the Internet edge, but going inside" to provide firewall, antivirus, antispam and URL filtering deep within the corporate network. makes use of the Check Point FireWall-1 UTM, as well as Trend Micro, Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd.
#UTM APPLIANCES SOFTWARE#
ESoft Inc., which offers the InstaGate UTM with top speed of 190Mbit/sec., uses its own antivirus filtering but turns to Aluria Software for antispyware and Secure Computing for Web filtering. Some vendors making UTM products must partner with other security firms to support antivirus, or other content filtering, on their UTM products when they don't have the technology in-house.įor example, Cisco and Secure Computing partner with Trend Micro Inc., and SonicWall partners with McAfee Inc. UTM appliances vary considerably from vendor to vendor. While Fortinet leads at the high end and SonicWall at the low end, Kolodgy says, this still-nascent market is changing rapidly with Cisco's ASA appliance, which debuted a year ago shaking up the low end. "It has to have a firewall/VPN, gateway antivirus and preferably intrusion prevention," says Kolodgy, who estimates the UTM market will reach about $850 million by year's end, up from $700 million last year. UTM is the phrase coined two years ago by Charles Kolodgy, an analyst at research firm IDC, for the multipurpose security appliance whose basic foundation is a firewall or firewall/VPN. He noted that the Proventia MX 1004 supports 100 concurrent users, the MX 3006 as many as 250 concurrent users and the MX 5010 as many as 500 concurrent users.Ĭisco Systems Inc., which offers various models of its Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) that tops out at 1.2Gbit/sec., is reluctant to admit more than a 10% performance hit.ĭespite any drawbacks associated with bandwidth, UTM seems to be here to stay. "The approach we take is we size according to the number of users," Butler says. "In general, it's more like 10%, but 50% is possible," says Mark Butler, director of product marketing at ISS, which offers three multifunction security appliances in its Proventia line.
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