Watchguard Broadens Extensible Threat Management Portfolio

The appliances are also equipped with RapidDeploy, which allows customers to preconfigure XTM appliances for branch offices.

Security specialist Watchguard Technologies announced the availability of seven new models in its line of Extensible Threat Management (XTM) products, part of the company’s unified threat management (UTM) portfolio aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and larger enterprises.

The XTM 800, 1500 and 2500 series appliances feature Intel Xeon multicore central processing units (CPUs) and QuickAssist technologies. The XTM models also feature dynamic routing, wide area network (WAN) failover, server load balancing and link aggregation. The included security services use technology from specialists like Websense, AVG and Broadweb to provide defense against modern malware and blended security threats.

The XTM 800 series, aimed at midsize businesses, provide up to 14G bps firewall throughput and more than 5G bps throughput with full IPS and antivirus threat protection enabled. Fourteen 1Gb Ethernet ports support high-speed LAN backbone infrastructures, as well as gigabit WAN connections. For business that need fiber support, the XTM 870-F includes eight 1Gb fiber ports.

For larger enterprises, the XTM 1520, 1525 and 2520 models are designed to provide speed and security and are suited for company headquarters, data centers and managed security services. The enterprise suite of XTM appliances provides customers with security tools and sophisticated administrative controls, all while maintaining manageability.

The flagship XTM 2520 offers up to 35G bps firewall throughput, 10G bps VPN throughput, and 15G bps throughput with full IPS and antivirus threat protection enabled. In addition, the appliance features 12 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 10G SFP+ support high-speed LAN backbone infrastructures, as well as gigabit WAN connections. Watchguard provides three options for appliance management, including the WatchGuard System Manager, the command line interface, and a Web user interface (UI) for access from anywhere.

"Historically, mediocre UTM performance has kept adoption limited to small and midsize businesses," Watchguard director of product management Roger Klorese said in a statement. "Since re-architecting our business three years ago, WatchGuard's relentless focus on delivering high-end UTM performance means we can now provide customers of any size with the highest level of protection in one speedy and scalable box. Our 'faster than market' growth in the enterprise space tells us we've struck a chord."

The appliances are also equipped with WatchGuard's configuration utility, RapidDeploy, which allows customers to preconfigure XTM appliances for branch offices and feature Fireware XTM 11.7, a recent software update from WatchGuard that offers an enhanced URL filtering database from strategic partner Websense, VPN applications for Google Android and Apple iOS devices, support for IPV6 and L2TP virtual private networks (VPN), and improved policy grouping.