Check Point moves into SMB UTM

Check Point has made a bid for the mid-market security appliance segment with the launch of its UTM-1 unified threat management (UTM) appliances.

The appliances, which are based upon the vendor’s enterprise and branch office VPN-1 Power and VPN-1 Edge UTM products offer stateful inspection firewall, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN, intrusion prevention, gateway antivirus and anti-spyware functionality.

Additional features include a Web application firewall and security functions for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), instant messaging and peer-to-peer networks.

Check Point, regional vice president Asia, Scott Ferguson, said that with the opportunity in the SMB UTM sector being substantial, the company expected to pick up market share in a relatively short period of time.

Ferguson said that the vendor estimated that the A/NZ market for Firewall, VPN and IDS/IPS in calendar Q3, 2006 was approximately $37.9m. Of this total, the SMB sector accounted for about 33.5 percent.

“We have market leadership in the enterprise [segment] both for firewall and VPN technologies,” he claimed. “Full UTM functionality is less attractive to the enterprise, where we see customers wanting to deploy stand alone applications for differing functions i.e. Firewall, VPN, IPS, Anti-virus etc.”

While there were already a number of established players in the SMB UTM sector, Ferguson conceded, Check Point was not coming late to the party.

“We see this as a rapidly growing market and one that is becoming more and more aware of the dependency that they have on the Internet to conduct their day to day business,” he said. “As such, security is becoming a more serious issue for the SMB. So, we think our timing is spot on.”

The UTM-1 range is available now starting at US$7,500.

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