Addressing unified threats securely

Network security has in the last few years been the focus of every enterprise, be it small or large. However, back then, companies only had to contend with viruses and e-mail spam and not the myriads of other security challenges that exist today.

The situation today is exacerbated by the increase of what is known in security parlance as blended threats - challenges comprising multiple different sets of threats working together to cripple today’s modern enterprises’ networks - as opposed to single threats which pop up in a non-coordinated way.

Such is the complex nature of these threats that security pundits have even coined up a specialised term in the industry known as Unified Threat Management (UTM) to describe security systems that need to be in place to combat these threats.

In a nutshell, UTM is a term used to describe a device that has a multitude of security features housed in one box. The functionalities include anti spam filtering, anti-virus capability, intrusion detection/prevention system (IDS or IPS), Internet content filtering, along with the traditional activities of a firewall.

The Growing UTM Market

According to the research firm IDC, the UTM market in Asia Pacific will expand at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of about 44% until 2009, making it one of the fastest-growing segments of computer security.

With the rise of these unified threats, there is a growing need to strategically address these challenges, says Eryin Halmen, country manager of security firm Fortinet for Malaysia and Brunei.

“This is where our company can help customers address their blended threat concerns as we are amongst the pioneers in the UTM space,” he told Business Today in an interview recently.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Fortinet claims to be the pioneer and leading provider of multi-threat security systems founded in 2000 by Ken Xie, the founder, former president and CEO of NetScreen.

Its flagship product - FortiGate - is touted to be the only one in the industry that claims to be based on ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) innovation that integrates firewall, virtual private network (VPN), antivirus, intrusion prevention system (IPS), web filtering, anti spam, anti spyware, and traffic shaping.

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