Kerio unveils Mac client for its VPN

Messaging and security vendor Kerio in March will release a Mac-based VPN client for its WinRoute Firewall.

The company released the beta of its new Mac VPN client for Kerio WinRoute Firewall at the annual MacWorld conference in San Francisco.

The company also said that the ActiveSynch for the iPhone technology it added to its Kerio MailServer, an alternative to Microsoft Exchange, has helped fuel sales among small-to-midsize businesses and new customers, including Tekserve, Shoot Digital, and Eleven.

"A third of our customers are now using the iPhone as their mobile device," says Dusan Vitek, vice president of worldwide marketing for Kerio.

With the VPN client, Kerio is taking its first leap into the Mac VPN market. The client is designed to mimic the Mac OS X interface and provides users secure access to protected network resources including intranets, documents, e-mail and databases.

Previously, Mac users had to tap FTP for remote access to network resources.

"Our motivation was to cater to small businesses today that have networks that combine Mac and PC," said Vitek.

Kerio already has a Windows-based client for its firewall, which provides anti-virus scanning Web content filtering, link load balancing, access policy management, and analysis/reporting. The firewall supports the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), SSL encryption and is network address translation compatible.

The Mac VPN client supports all Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X versions 10.4 and higher and is available for 32- and 64-bit processors. The Kerio Clientless VPN, which is built into the firewall, supports all versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.

Kerio WinRoute Firewall runs on Windows 2003, XP, 2003 and Vista, and starts at $329 with 10 users, or $395 with integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for virus filtering of all network.