Check Point Software Technologies launches five new appliances with an emphasis on better performance to meet the needs of SMBs.Check Point Software Technologies has expanded its unified threat management and gateway security portfolio with the release of several new devices focused on enhancing security and performance.
On April 15, the company launched three new UTM-1 Total Security appliances, as well as two products as part of the newly created Check Point Power-1 product line. The UTM-1 devices offer site-to-site and remote access VPN, application and network-layer firewall, intrusion prevention, gateway anti-virus, anti-spyware and URL filtering.
The Power-1 devices support firewall, IPSec, intrusion prevention, VPN and, for a subscription fee, Check Point's SmartDefense services.
The Power-1 5070 model features 9G-bps firewall throughput, while the other version, Power-1 9070, supports 14G-bps firewall throughput, company officials said. The new UTM products feature improved performance as well.
The UTM-1 Total Security 270 features 400M-bps firewall throughput and 100M-bps VPN throughputs, while the 570 model features 1.1G-bps firewall throughput and 250M-bps VPN throughputs, and the 3070 supports 4.5G-bps Mbps firewall throughput and 1.1G-bps VPN throughput.
“Many of the competitive products that are on the market today can run firewalls just fine, maybe VPN, but as soon as you start turning on anti-virus, intrusion prevention and some sort of Web filtering or anti-spam capability, the box performance grinds down to a halt,” said Bob Egner, vice president of product management at Check Point. “With the Check Point product, we’re focused very much on keeping the throughput as consistent as we can there.”
The company is riding the wave of UTM adoption by midmarket enterprises. The market is going strong, as smaller organizations look for ways to manage security threats more easily and effectively, several analysts said.
Nick Selby, an analyst with The 451 Group, said while the UTM market is steadily becoming commoditized, there are still some vendors adding functionality beyond UTM’s traditional firewall, anti-virus and IPS, such as secure remote access and bandwidth throttling to allow customers to keep Web-enabled applications from choking up the LAN connection.
Gartner analyst Adam Hils said that while the feature set of UTM devices—network, messaging and Web security—has stabilized, the capabilities provided by vendors across those areas vary widely. Businesses should also evaluate manageability and the quality of support, he said, adding an unmanageable, poorly supported box in an SMB environment can be a network Armageddon.
“Midsize businesses should make sure they understand which features are open source, which features are OEMed, and what the UTM providers’ security research processes look like,” he said.
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