CRN Interview: Robert Thomas, NetScreen Technologies

In an interview last month after his company posted strong third-quarter earnings, NetScreen Technologies President and CEO Robert Thomas spoke with West Coast Bureau Chief Marcia Savage about the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Internet security appliance maker's product plans and competition.

CRN: What's ahead on NetScreen's road map?

THOMAS: We acquired a company called OneSecure, an intrusion-prevention company, about a year ago. In October, we will take most of that intrusion-prevention capability we acquired from OneSecure and embed that into our existing software. We'll have a new release of software in the fourth quarter that our customers can take and load into existing NetScreen products and automatically have access to very sophisticated intrusion-prevention capability as well as firewall, VPN and the other things we offer. %85 We're also releasing a new version of our management platform so that intrusion-prevention functionality can be managed from the same management platform inside our existing firewall and VPN products. In the first part of calendar [year] 2004, we will add to that intrusion-prevention capability other application-level security components and deliver a new range of security gateways %85 that have much deeper application-level security, intrusion-prevention, firewall and VPN, based on new silicon. %85 The third thing is to enhance the management platform that we have to manage all our devices,stand-alone or integrated,all from one management platform.

CRN: Are you interested in SSL VPN technology?

THOMAS: We are. Our belief is that remote access will be SSL almost exclusively sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, so it's important to have a solution in that area. We have a relationship with SafeWeb at the moment, where we view them as our remote SSL solution. But we need to have a more integrated solution, and we need to have a better solution. We're looking at a number of different ways to go about doing that.

CRN: Whom do you see as your top competitor?

THOMAS: Every day of our lives, we see Cisco [Systems] and we see Check Point [Software Technologies]. We rarely see anyone else. That's probably because most of the sales we get in are at the high end of the enterprise. They're formidable competitors, but our win rate is extremely high.

CRN: What do you think of Microsoft moving into the antivirus space? Do you think it will be a competitor?

THOMAS: I don't for a long, long time, if ever. %85 Our belief is that in large corporate networks, when antivirus gateways do what they should, that antivirus protection will shift from desktops into gateways. %85 Antivirus protection will be network-based rather than desktop-based. Microsoft today is still a desktop company %85 I could see them giving Symantec and Network Associates a huge headache in the desktop antivirus market once they get their product robust enough to be industrial-strength because they'll do what they did with browsers,they'll just give it away. You might pay Microsoft $1.50 a month to get updates, but they'll give the product away for a very low price and just repeat the browser game all over again.