Unified threat management

Organisations are awash in a sea of attacks on information assets. Place a probe outside almost any firewall and you will find a continual stream of low-level network attacks, peppered from time to time with serious break-in attempts. Add to this the virus-infected e-mails, worms, spam and spyware that keep coming. Top it off with sophisticated attacks on Web servers and it becomes quite a challenge.

Early solutions were ad hoc and piecemeal. These included virus detection and prevention, firewalls, host and network intrusion detection, encryption, secure host configurations, never-ending patch management, access control and review, penetration testing, vulnerability assessments, and so on. Not only is it labour-intensive and expensive ensuring all these are in place, it`s problematic sufficiently coordinating them to ensure adequate and timely protection.

At the same time, the emphasis has shifted from threat avoidance to threat management. The latter requires, for example:

* Cost-effectiveness. Total system costs should be less than the expected loss if there are security breaches due to a lack of controls. When considering total costs, recognise the hardware and software costs, operational costs, and their potential impact on business.

* Coordination. It has to take place between organisations and between technologies.

* Streamlined administration. Manual processes will break down under too much volume and pressure; throwing more labour at the problem usually worsens it while increasing costs.

* Interoperability. If the technical components don`t work well together, incident resolution (and sometimes even incident determination) is difficult, if not impossible.

Trek to the summit

00Days

:

00Hrs

:

00Min

:

00Sec

Unified threat management (UTM) security appliances are products that unify and integrate multiple security features integrated onto a single hardware platform. Qualification for inclusion within this category requires network firewall capabilities, network intrusion detection and prevention (IDP), and gateway anti-virus (AV) functionality.

All of these security features do not need to be utilised concurrently, but they do need to exist in the product. In fact, larger enterprises and service providers offering managed security services vary their use of the anti-virus firewall capabilities in their networks. Industry analysts attribute the rapid market adoption of UTM security appliances to the fact that the rise in blended threats requires a greater breadth of integrated functionality and deployment flexibility.

It`s a state-of-the-art method of managing an abundance of information-security threats. Efficiently packaged and effectively delivered, it will reduce the cost and increase the reliability of any information security program. Unified threat management is a compelling and natural consolidation point in the evolution of information asset protection. Part technology and part packaging, it responds to the growing challenge of protecting information assets in the 21st century.

Businesses are interconnecting more with each other, with customers, with vendors, with government agencies, and with the public. How does an organisation make sure these interconnections (and the networked resources they connect) are used appropriately?

NamITech has chosen to partner with Fortinet - the confirmed market leader in unified threat management and only provider of ASIC-accelerated, network-based anti-virus firewall systems for real-time network protection. According to IDC, the UTM segment of the threat management appliance category was the fastest growing segment of the security market.

"The emerging UTM security appliance market transforms single function appliances into a more flexible environment for deploying multiple security features on a single platform. UTMs are quickly gaining popularity because they offer security application performance, operating cost savings and capital cost preservation," said Michael Horn, Executive: Managed Security Services at NamITech.

"As the leading UTM vendor, Fortinet is a driving force in this market. It helps customers thwart blended threats, offers a wide variety of functionality, integrates security services, and solidly supports applications with high-performance hardware systems."

"Fortinet has demonstrated its investment in powerful network processing technology by filtering viruses in-line, which requires an unprecedented level of packet assembly and filtering." - Gartner Fortinet`s FortiGate anti-virus firewalls deliver the highest level of security available and are the only security systems in the world that are certified by the ICSA for anti-virus, IPSec, firewall and intrusion detection functionality. The systems add a critical layer of real-time, network-based anti-virus protection that complements host-based anti-virus software and supports "defence-in-depth" strategies without compromising performance or cost. Fortinet platforms are deployed for anti-virus protection and content filtering alone in conjunction with existing firewall, VPN and related devices, or as complete dynamic network threat prevention systems with just a simple configuration change.