Review: Trend Micro Appliance Finds The Middle Ground

Businesses with around a hundred users often are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to security. They have too much traffic to use an all-in-one appliance yet too small of a budget to fully implement an enterprise-style layered approach to security.

Trend Micro's IGSA line, unveiled this week, comprises six extendable security appliances for 100, 200, 300, 600, 800 and 1,000 users. The CRN Test Center engineers took a look at the IGSA 100, which offers all of the features of its bigger brethren but is scaled for 100 users.

At an MSRP of $4,490, the IGSA 100's pricing works out to less than $50 per seat, which is very reasonable compared with the cost of traditional, software-only desktop security products. IGSA does a lot more than the typical antivirus product. Classified as a unified threat management (UTM) device, the product combines antivirus, antispam, antispyware and content filtering to combat multilevel threats.

The antivirus capability prevents incoming and outgoing virus outbreaks, and the antispyware component identifies and blocks spyware-related activity. Add to that the one-two punch of antispam and content filtering, and all avenues for infection and replication of malware are blocked.

For example, if spyware is delivered via an e-mail, the spam filter should block it; if not, the antispyware component will prevent the installation of spyware. And if those first two steps fail, the content filter would prevent any information being delivered via the Web to a spyware site. The same type of process also applies for viruses. That combination of threat isolation brings a layered approach to security, while identifying and blocking unified attacks.

The IGSA 100 is housed in an attractive, red 1U rack appliance. The unit sports three 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports for connectivity and a front-mounted LCD panel for initial setup and status. Designed to be plug and play, the product is one of the easiest UTM appliances to deploy, the Test Center found.

Powered by a 3GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with 1 Gbyte of RAM and running a hard-end version of Linux, the IGSA 100 offers more than adequate performance for 100 users. Setup tasks are completed using an HTTPS-based Web console, as is overall management of the device. Management is broken down into easy-to-understand menus with help dialogs and should pose no challenge for a typical administrator.

The ability to fully control the device remotely plays well into the hands of VARs seeking to offer a management service for the unit. That may prove to be a lucrative service, since many midsize businesses lack on-site IT security professionals.