When talking with many organisation's especially those with limited resources to manage security, there appears to be a need to lower complexity by reducing the number of appliances, servers and devices used to protect that organisation’ assets.

This growing demand has now manifested itself in a technological approach called Unified Threat Management (UTM) which relies on the principle of a single network device being capable of performing a number of security functions (antivirus, firewall, intrusion detection/prevention, antispam, content filtering, VPN etc) either singularly or simultaneously.

Immediately you will think that this is at odds to the old-fashioned approach of ‘point products’; devices – of which there will be a great many in a typical enterprise network - engineered for a single, static purpose.

Maybe true but UTM is catching on.  Global analysts IDC go as far as suggesting that by 2008, customer demand will enable UTM devices to dominate the $3.45bn security appliance market, overtaking the sum total of traditional firewall/VPN competition.  But why?  Is it convenience, lower cost of ownership, better functionality, or is it just a fashion?

Customers want lower costs, and better functionality but they also want solutions that enable them to be strategic about their IT security infrastructures.  In such a fast-changing world of new network-borne threats to their organisation, IT managers feel as though they are constantly having to respond and panic, rather than plan and manage.  This is what has led so many in the past to reach out and grab immediate solutions (i.e. specialised single function devices) rather than considered ones.

A point-product firewall will be a firewall forever; whereas the characteristics of a UTM device meet a far greater range of needs over the lifetime of the network.  The deployment of high-quality UTM devices is therefore strategic and proactive, particularly given the comparative short-termism of deploying point products tactically and reactively for today’s needs; rather than tomorrow’s.

For this reason, Servo believes that Fortinet offer an intriguing proposition as being the pioneer and market leader in Unified Threat Management and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based multi-threat security systems for real-time network protection. Fortinet have won SC Magazine’s prestigious Reader Trust Award for “Best Internet Security Appliance” in the category of Unified Threat Management (UTM) in February, 2006.

Fortinet's market-leading FortiGate systems are ASIC-accelerated security appliances that deliver real-time network protection through the integration of a broad range of security functions -- including firewall, virtual private networking (VPN), antivirus, intrusion prevention (IPS), Web filtering, traffic shaping, and anti-spam.

Protection around the clock…

All of Fortinet's FortiGate systems are ICSA-certified for firewall, antivirus, IDS, IPSec VPN and SSL VPN; easy to manage and provide cost-effective network-level and content-level protection at the network gateway and edge. FortiGate systems are kept up to date automatically through Fortinet's FortiGuard™ Network, which delivers continuous and automatic signature 'push' updates that ensure protection against the latest viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, intrusions and other threats around the clock, and around the world.

If you’re interested in learning more about Unified Threat Management, please email Fortinet@servo.co.uk and one of our Security consultants will be happy to help.