* Tipping Point enters the unified threat management fray
This week Tipping Point is introducing a multi-function security box for smaller sites that includes as part of its features a firewall and VPN.
As noted in the last newsletter, this firewall/VPN mix in a single appliance with other security applications is a trend that’s only going to gain momentum over the next few years. The devices even have a category name and acronym: unified threat management (UTM). But this Tipping Point development is more than just part of the trend.
Most vendors have come at the multi-function problem from firewall/VPN roots. The boxes were designed to terminate VPN tunnels and provide a stateful-inspection firewall to filter Internet traffic. Adding on other applications such as anti-virus or URL filtering added a lot of extra demand for CPU cycles that affected the performance of early versions of UTMs.
Later, vendors made hardware blades available to boost the processing power for those customers who wanted to add features without degrading performance.
Tipping Point, though, has come at the problem from the other side. The company, now part of 3Com, started out making only high-end intrusion prevention systems that dig into packets and figure out whether malicious traffic is trying to get through. Making a relatively small UTM is an afterthought, so the box has the same design biases as its larger siblings. The company claims it supports 50M-bit/sec firewall, VPN and IPS.
The new device, called X505 costs $4,000, which is ballpark for this kind of appliance, less than some, more than others. But its pedigree is different and warrants a look from customers looking to upgrade their VPNs.
