Leaders Of The Pack

After examining all of the candidates, three units surfaced as best-in-class products: Astaro’s Security Gateway, Palisade System’s PacketSure and StillSecure’s Strata Guard. Once Test Center engineers considered channel factors and technology advantages, Astaro’s Security Gateway edged out the others as the Test Center’s pick for Product of the Year.

Astaro’s commitment to the channel and outstanding feature set combine to promote partner success and profitability. The Security Gateway 420 offers integrated protection for hundreds of users at an affordable price, and partners can expect to earn margins of up to 40 percent.

The security appliance offers stateful inspection firewall; VPN gateway; spam, virus, surf and intrusion protection; event/activity reporting; log storage and query tools; DHCP server; network-traffic accounting; portscan detection; DOS protection; and a SIP/VoIP proxy service.

That impressive feature set proves to be easy to manage with Astaro’s included browser-based management console, where ease of use and consistency are emphasized.
—Frank J. Ohlhorst