Netgear Touts SMB Security Strategy
Netgear wants to be the Swiss Army Knife of SMB security. The company continues to promote a unified threat management device — called the ProSecure UTM10 — for VARs and solutions providers serving the small and midsize business markets. Here’s a look at Netgear’s strategy.
Netgear claims its UTM solutions, launched back in April 2009, are 1.3X to 4.5X more effective at stopping threats than rival products. We haven’t put those claims to the test. And surely, rivals like SonicWall, Fortinet and WatchGuard may have differing opinions.
According to Jason Leung, senior product line manager for Netgear SMB, most small and midsize organizations deal with three problems when looking for a protection solution: Cost, Performance and Effectiveness. The Netgear ProSecure UTM10, Leung claims, addresses all three of those needs.
Netgear, through a partnership with Sophos, has packed in an anti-virus layer that scans data streams in parallel and drops CPU latency. With all that extra CPU power to use, Netgear pulled in technology from CommTouch, enabling a layer of anti-spam, e-mail, web and URL filtering, too. Leung claims the UTM10 scrubbed out 90% of spyware, trojans , bots and other worms. On a WildList detection test, the UTM10 cleaned out 100% of nearly 3.5K viruses in a sample.
The UTM device is from ProSecure, a separate division of Netgear that specializes in security only. Leung claims the UTM effort involves “security devices created by security people” and not a network company putting out another firewall box.
Of course, this box still does the basics — SSL, VPNs, blocking P2P, etc. But the big twist: The UTM10 costs $376 — a price tag that may attract attention in the SMB market.
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