Watchguard Brings UTM To Branch Offices

Adding UTM to the e-Series line gives SMB and branch offices with up to 50 users a broad umbrella of protection against malware and emerging threats, with firewall, VPN, gateway antivirus, intrusion prevention, antispam and URL filtering features, according to Kathleen Brush, vice president of marketing at Seattle-based Watchguard.

The Firebox X Edge e-Series detects threats with true proxies built into the appliance, which gives the product better detection capability than products that rely on filters, says Carl Mazzanti, CEO of eMazzanti Technologies, a Hoboken, N.J.-based solution provider.

"Watchguard is one of the few vendors that offers proxies in an appliance at the sub-1000 user level," Mazzanti added.

Proxies inspect entire packets, opposed to just the headers, to ensure they're appropriate protocols, which enables the appliance to block malicious code and protect against zero day threats, Mazzanti said.

Features normally reserved for enterprise class UTM appliances are also included in the appliance, such as IPSec for remote access, 1:1 network address translation (NAT) and dynamic NAT, support for multiple external IP addresses, and wide area network (WAN) failover, Brush said.

WatchGuard in July was acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners for $151 million, ending months of industry speculation that the vendor would go private.

Watchguard is back on the right track now that it's privately owned, Brush noted. "Watchguard is healthier than it's been in a long time, the new owners are in this for the long haul, and we are very positive about being private and no longer subject to the tyranny of quarterly reports," she said.

However, one Watchguard VAR who requested anonymity isn't as sanguine about the company's prospects, particularly with regard to its channel program. The source told CRN he recently lost both of his sales reps and has not heard anything from Watchguard about how he'll be supported in the future.

"If I don't have outside support I'm going to have to look elsewhere," the source said.

The WatchGuard Firebox X Edge e-Series UTM security appliance will be available December 13 and is priced starting at $480 for the wired model and $580 for the wireless version, with UTM bundles starting at $799.

New customers receive free 90-day LiveSecurity service subscriptions which include software updates, technical support, and an alert service for emerging threats.