* What are unified threat management appliances?
VPN vendors keep adding more and more stuff to their VPN/firewall gear turning them into a new category of devices that a lot of people call a unified threat management appliance or UTM.
The basic philosophy is that since you are stopping packets at the firewall/VPN gateway and analyzing them anyway, you might as well analyze them for a bunch of other stuff at the same time, such as for virus infections, spyware, unauthorized Internet traffic and the like.
The idea seems to be catching on. IDC looked at these devices and compared sales of those to sales of firewall/VPN boxes and projects that next year, the sales of firewall/VPN gear will peak and start a slow decline. Sales of UTMs, on the other hand, will increase steadily through 2008, which is the far end of the projection. That year, sales of UTMs will reach $1.98 billion worldwide, which is $180 million more than the study projects for peak sales of firewall/VPN appliances.
This doesn’t spell the demise of VPNs or of firewalls. Firewalls and VPN gateways are a key part of these UTM devices. And according to the IDC study, combined firewall/VPN and UTM sales increases steadily through 2008 at about 16% per year.
But it does spell a turning point for how most businesses look at perimeter security. Until now, many have been piling the furniture up against the door a piece at a time to keep out the bad guys, adding firewalls, anti-virus software, URL filtering, endpoint checking software and anti-spyware. The room is getting cluttered as a result.
More literally, the wiring closet is getting crowded with all those boxes and when the time comes to buy new gear, it makes sense to clear up some of the clutter. And as these UTMs come down in size and price, they will offer the opportunity to give more protection to smaller corporate sites with simpler management. Even if current firewall/VPN gear has life left in it, businesses should at least casually explore these more comprehensive devices.
