McAfee targets SMEs

By Staff Writer for Trellix
Johannesburg, 02 Jun 2009

McAfee has released a line of unified threat management (UTM) firewalls specifically designed to meet the security demands of SMEs.

"Unified threat management devices continue to be in high demand and are the predominate security appliance that SMEs will be looking for in 2009," explains Jayson O'Reilly, regional manager for Africa at McAfee.

Appealing to SMEs' need for competitive pricing, O'Reilly says UTM offers a strong security posture without compromising reliability.

“They help SMEs respond to cost-cutting initiatives, managing their risk and meeting their compliance regulations programmes. Devices that offer a wide range of security solutions in an integrated package with a platform for subscription-based security services will remain the most viable," states O'Reilly.

He says features include integrated intrusion prevention, network firewall protection and VPN services.

SMEs can also opt for modules that include enterprise-class technology such as TrustedSource reputation ratings for mail filtering and Web filtering, to provide protection against known and unknown threats. These can include anti-malware, anti-spyware and anti-virus capabilities, adds O'Reilly.

McAfee says it recently conducted a survey with MSI International of McAfee SME customers to better understand the UTM opportunity for SMEs. Findings suggested the most utilised features on a UTM device are network firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, and virtual private networking capabilities.

The company says it has ensured these features are available on all devices without licensing restrictions, which is important for smaller, growing organisations.