Without good management tools, the enterprise-class unified-threat-management firewalls we tested would be little more than expensive packet-pushers.

Laying out these firewalls like pieces of cheese on a plate made it clear that there are substantial differences. Each wedge may look more or less the same, but firewall management is one of the greatest differentiators we found among products. Once you taste them, you can easily tell the differences.

UTM adds another layer of confusion to the already challenging area of firewall management. For example, Check Point Software, long lauded for its top-notch firewall management, blew it when driving its UTM features. Check Point's intrusion-prevention and antivirus features don't have the great precision and control of the system it set up to control firewall, VPN and NAT policies. This is one thing that applies to all platforms.

Check Point's lapse has been an opportunity for Cisco and Juniper Networks. If there were an award for "most improved management capability," we'd give it to Cisco. The Cisco Security Manager (CSM) demonstrates that - while admittedly a few years late to the party - Cisco doesn't just understand how to manage enterprise firewalls (hint: it's not from the command line), but also is putting its software where its PowerPoint presentations used to be.