Evolving Threat Management Solutions

As new security threats kept fostering and managing different threats
seamlessly becomes a huge hardship for enterprises, a new concept called Unified
Threat Management (UTM) has evolved. UTM is an exceptional and efficient way of
securing a commercial network. However, due to changing markets trends and new
technologies, businesses today are at a point of inflection, where they have
become more prone to threats and the security of their information, reputation
and assets are at a risk.

Changing dynamics

Keeping the above mentioned scenario in mind the industry is looking for
solutions that might act proactively and manage the threats that are occurring
out of newer business dynamics and newer technologies. XTM is a solution that
seems to be evolving from the companies that are focusing on security solutions.
This solution is claimed to be the next generation of UTM appliances and this is
based upon the substantive expansion of three elements: more security, greater
networking capabilities, and more management flexibility.

Evolution of UTM

UTM was the integration of firewall, IDS/IPS and gateway AV and later web-based
content filtering and spam blocking, as well as both IPSec and SSL VPN
capabilities were added to this solution. UTM appliances quickly became a
network security favorite for SMB, mid-market (SME), and enterprise branch
office environments. It also received widespread adoption across all the
verticals.

According to a report from WatchGuard, by 2007 the UTM market had grown
approximately 35 percent YoY, to reach $1.216 billion. "By 2008, industry
analysts estimate that sales of UTM appliances will surpass traditional
firewall/VPN solutions. By 2010, sales of UTM devices are expected to exceed
$2.5 billion," the report claimed.

XTM is a real time solution that is the need of the hour as it can be upgraded without having to invest on the hardware or software

Need For XTM

Even though UTM remains a big market for all security solutions vendor, they
feel that putting UTM alone in place wouldn't be sufficient for the enterprise
and one has to think beyond that, as it wouldn't be sufficient enough to tackle
the looming next generation security threats.

IDC Analyst Charles Kolodgy has written in his "Kolodgy Reports" for SC
Magazine that "IDC believes that XTM platforms will take security appliances
beyond traditional boundaries by vastly expanding security features, networking
capabilities and management flexibility." He has also said that the future XTM
appliances should provide automated processes-such as logging, reputation-based
protections, event correlation, network access control and vulnerability
management. Adding to the networking capabilities will be management of network
bandwidth, traffic shaping, throughput, latency and other features, including
unified communications.

According to Nobert Kiss, VP-APAC Sales, WatchGuard Technologies, "XTM will
deliver to customers a solution that would address threats more quickly. The 'X'
here means extendable or expandable. It's primary thing is the ability to secure
any HTTPS, proxies and voice over IPs, which the UTM wasn't able to do it in the
past."

By his opinion, primarily UTM has been a solution defined for firewalls
anti-virus, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention activities. "What XTM
does is that it continues to provide important parts of security features and
enables one to add additional threats comprehensively. Certain threats in the
form of HTTPS and VoIP can be easily identified and managed using the XTM. UTM
didn't have that inherent technology to be able to protect those threats," Kiss
claimed.

Karthik Sahani, Regional Director, McAfee feels that UTM and XTM are purpose
built devices. "The threat profile has gone up and enterprises want data
protection, NAC, encryption and leakage prevention. Now people are looking for
solutions that are neither higher nor lower end but would be able to provide IPH,
gateway, encryption, data leakage prevention in a single device," Sahani opined.

According to Ronny Ferro, Business Head, Essenvison Software, a Mumbai-based
security consulting company, XTM is the solution that is ready for managing the
new threats. "As new technologies come in, there are new security threats that
arise from those technologies and there are no management solutions that are
prepared to prevent or manage those attacks," said Ferro.

He feels that the solution that is the need of the hour is that which can be
upgraded without having to invest on the hardware or software. "XTM is one such
real time solution," Ferro added.

More features

Apart from the extended security features, XTM has more advantages.
WatchGuard recently launched its version of XTM called WatchGuard XTM 1050 in US
and it is due for launch in India soon.

One of the key benefits of WatchGuard is that the XTM solution can be
downloaded and installed on the existing hardware set up and no restructuring or
hardware up gradation is required on the set-up.

There are two aspects of the XTM solution offered by WatchGuard. One is the
software and the additional security, the other is the hardware component. "The
recently launched XTM 1050, the whole new hardware platform with same operating
system can provide through puts up to 10 Gigabyte. Apart from the security
demands the throughput demands are also going up and the solution would be able
to provide a good through put to the enterprises," explained Kiss of WatchGuard.

"We are talking about 10Gbps firewall and 2Gbps IPSec throughput and 12
ports. We have fixed a competitive price for that where people will really love
to embrace. In the past 15 days we have seen so much of interest among the
partners and the customers, when we shared the details of this product," Sapra
of WatchGuard Technologies.

Pitching the solution

Kiss accepts that the cost is a major aspect and challenging task for the
vendor. "For any vendor cost of the solution is a major challenge as the
enterprises aren't ready to spend too much on

one particular solution and they are bothered only about the return on
investment. So when we talk to the partners and train them, we ask them to pitch
the concept of RoI in deploying the XTM solutions."

WatchGuard has training programs for the partners, where they provide the
study materials and the total solutions of WatchGuard and train them. Most
partners who were trained with WatchGuard have started providing the XTM
solutions to their clients.

From UTM to XTM

Sunil Sapra, Country Manager-India & SAARC, WatchGuard opined, "Next year,
we wouldn't be talking about UTM at all and everything would have evolved into
XTM. Transition from a software perspective would be fast. By January 2009, all
our solutions would be compatible with XTM. By mid next year all software and
hardware would have evolved into XTM."

Sahani also felt that the XTM concept could slowly replace the UTM as the
requirement of enterprises have gone up and so has the threat levels. "A UTM is
basically a firewall, IPH and gateway appliance. Now lots of companies are going
for encryption, encryption management and data leakage preventions and those
options aren't present in UTM, where the need for XTM would be felt and the
device will replace UTM by default," he averred.

McAfee is working on a similar product. "We are working on a similar offering
like XTM. We have all the technology in place and the acquisition of Secure
Computing has added value to this process, where they have a similar product of
that kind. We may use Secure Computing's firewall capabilities, IPH capabilities
and bundle more applications into one. But we don't have any particular
timeframe or roadmap for doing that," Sahani informed.

NR SETHURAMAN

sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in