* Study shows continued growth of SSL VPNs and UTM appliances
Editor’s Note : On Dec. 4, this newsletter will shift its focus from VPNs to network access control. NAC is an emerging network security architecture that starts with securing endpoints before they connect to networks and extends to monitoring and controlling their activity after they have been admitted. There are working NAC products today, but most vendors committed to NAC are still fleshing out their products, which makes it an area that warrants a newsletter of its own. Along with the shift in focus comes a new, intuitive name: the Network Access Control Newsletter. We hope you find it useful. Network World and networkworld.com will continue to cover VPNs as part of our regular news coverage. Thanks for reading.
Growth of SSL VPNs is screaming along, up 47% over a year ago, according to a study by Synergy Research Group.
The study is a quarterly report that chronicles the share of the worldwide network security market that various vendors hold, and the latest says that SSL VPNs took in $71.2 million in the third quarter, up from about $48.4 million in the third quarter of 2005.
That’s pretty good growth for anything, and it indicates that the technology is still in its expansion phase, replacing IPSec remote access VPNs and augmenting wireless network security, the study says.
The one area where even SSL VPN vendors said IPSec was superior – site-to-site VPNS – is also under attack. In October, Array Networks announced the first site-to-site SSL VPN, and Synergy thinks that is the start of a trend. “SRG believes that in time SSL VPNs will further displace their IPSec rivals for site-to-site deployments as well,” the report says.
Also showing healthy growth were multifunction security devices, also known as hybrid security solutions referred to as unified threat management (UTM) appliances. In the third quarter, customers bought $980.1 million worth of these devices, which have as their core firewall/VPN platforms.
While those two functions remain key to these devices, their hardware platforms are making strides. Whereas initially multifunction platforms were based on the same hardware, more and more vendors are reengineering them so they can handle the additional processing that antivirus, antispam and URL filtering require without adding to overall delay of traffic through the boxes.
In the future, then, it makes sense for customers to look into these devices when it comes time to upgrade their firewall/VPNs. Consolidating network defenses onto one platform can have benefits.
