ThreatChaos Security Blog

Wednesday, 20 April 2011 14:20

WatchGuard's history is a demonstration of the recent evolution of the firewall. I have often stated and continue to advise vendors and investors that there is only one large addressable market in network security and that is the gateway which stands at about $10 billion/year. So, UTM's legacy is to collapse multiple security functions into one hardware appliance that can be centrally managed. The first such combination was the integration of VPN into the firewall which is still a primary function of the stand alone firewalls from Cisco, Juniper, and Check Point.

But the content inspection required to do URL filtering, anti-malware, and Data Leak Prevention (DLP) in a gateway device requires more heavy lifting. Doing so at high network speeds requires investment in hardware acceleration be it ASICs or multicore processors. It is easier to get to complete content inspection at the lower bandwidth of remote offices and small offices so it is no wonder that UTM's first market to conquer was SOHO and the distributed enterprise such as retailers, restaurants, dealerships, government, and healthcare, some of which deploy UTM devices to thousands of locations. But, the value proposition is there and vendors such as WatchGuard are building more and more powerful devices to address the needs on the high end.

Watch this interview with Eric Aarrestad, VP Marketing for WatchGaurd to learn how Watchguard is addressing the needs of the enterprise in gateway and content security.

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