Spreading IT resources across multiple physical locations can lower costs, protect against data loss and improve performance. But it also creates more opportunities for bad people to break in. With concerns like these in mind, Opengear is making a run at the security space with the introduction of a new gateway product centered on security. Here’s the scoop:

We’ve already seen notable moves from Opengear earlier this year, including a partnership with Cormant and the development of “automated remediation” features on its products for automatically resolving problems on the network.

Now, the company, which focuses on remote management solutions powered by open source software, is continuing its trend of expansion with the introduction of a new product, the Opengear IM4216-34, which is billed as “a high capacity infrastructure management gateway that proactively monitors and maintains the health of all the IT equipment in data centers and remote locations.”

Focus on Security

The IM4216-34 isn’t only about security features — Opengear is pushing promoting the product’s automated response and advanced remote monitoring functionality — but security highlights top the list of functionality promoted on the device:

And this focus on security isn’t unique to the new product release. It’s part of a broader trend at Opengear, which was highlighted in the last year by the hiring of McAfee veteran Rick Stevenson as CEO in July. John D. Bedrick, who had worked most recently at CryptoMill, came on board as Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Product Management around the same time, bringing more security expertise to the Opengear management team.

Accompanying the introduction of the IM4216-34 was the announcement of support for Kerberos on its products. That’s a must-have in a lot of situations — and I’m personally a little surprised it wasn’t already supported, especially since Opengear is so heavily invested in the open source channel — but it pretty much completes the robust set of secure protocols already available on Opengear, including but not limited to RADIUS, IPSec and OpenVPN.

Thus, Opengear is carving out a new niche for itself in the security space, building on top of the establishment it already enjoys as a provider of infrastructure management solutions heavily integrated within the open source channel. We’re keeping our eyes on the company to see where it goes in the new year.