Firewalls for SMBs that chew through encrypted streams
At Infosecurity Europe 2015, WatchGuard Technologies announced a new series of enterprise-strength firewalls engineered specifically to protect small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
SMBs are increasingly the focus of cyber attacks that are no less sophisticated than those targeting large enterprises. WatchGuard’s new Firebox M200 and M300 Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) and Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances are up to 218 percent faster than competitors with all the layers of the company’s award-winning defense-in-depth solutions turned on.
Plus, the new firewalls are up to 385 percent faster performing HTTPS inspection, which is increasingly critical given encrypted traffic is expected to make up 75 percent of the total Internet traffic by 2016.
The new Firebox M200 and M300 run WatchGuard’s Fireware operating system and include the latest generation of Freescale multi-core processors, ensuring the appliances have the power to run all of the UTM and NGFW engines in parallel without causing a bottleneck in performance at any price point. Both appliances also offer RapidDeploy support that simplifies deployment for SMBs, which usually have smaller, less technical staff.
“While Sony and Target breaches have dominated the headlines, in reality small businesses like Dot’s Hamburgers, Smythe and Son’s Manufacturing, and Four Cities Regional Pharmacy are equally under attack,” said Corey Nachreiner, chief technology officer at WatchGuard. “In fact, smaller companies are generally less protected and easier to breach, with nearly 44 percent already affected by cyber attacks. Statistically, many of them won’t survive the attack beyond six months.”
“As a fast growing SMB, our customers, employees and growth are everything to us. A major breach or PCI compliance issue could shut us down,” said Jamie Stables, support analyst at Brompton Bikes, a UK-based manufacturer and global retailer of folding bikes. “With WatchGuard’s new firewalls, we have the horsepower to watch both HTTP and HTTPS streams, and ensure we’re protecting our assets. More so, Dimension allows us to easily see the key threats impacting our business, and we still have the performance we need to keep our employees happy and productive.”
