Astaro Essential Firewall free to business users

Astaro distributor, NetXactics, has announced Astaro's Essential Firewall, which is a full-featured business firewall available free of charge. It provides firewalling, networking tools, routing and secure remote access for employees, offering fundamental security functions to help protect business networks.

“The Essential Firewall gives companies with limited IT resources or available budgets the option of deploying an effective security solution that can also be expanded as your needs evolve,” says Brett Myroff, CEO of NetXactics.

Essential Firewall can be downloaded and set up within minutes. A Web-based GUI allows for easy system configuration, with no need for additional third-party tools. The solution features SNMP support, protection for unlimited IP addresses, detailed bandwidth statistics and centralised management via Astaro Command Centre (also free).

Security rules can be easily set up to control Web traffic. Secure VPN further gives road warriors access to the network from home offices, hotels or airports.

“Essential Firewall is a version of Astaro's Security Gateway and can be installed as the network gateway for all traffic in routing mode, or in a transparent bridged configuration.

“It is available either as a software appliance or virtual appliance, both offering the same feature set,” says Myroff.

The software appliance can be installed on a dedicated Intel compatible PC or in a virtual machine. The virtual appliance runs directly in any VMware vSphere edition and protects against threats from the Internet, such as viruses and Trojans, while also controlling and monitoring data traffic between virtual machines.

Companies also have the option of upgrading from the free version to Astaro's Professional Edition at any stage, which features full network, Web, mail and Web application security.

Astaro Essential Firewall can be downloaded from http://www.astaro.com/landingpages/en-worldwide-essential-firewall.