WatchGuard protects Apple users

WatchGuard Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, today unveiled its new security technology designed specifically for Apple iOS-enabled devices.

By doing so, WatchGuard provides mobile users unparalleled protection for their iPhone, iPad and iPod touch data, while giving network administrators a superior way to manage, monitor and secure mobile devices, information and applications.

"The issue of managing and securing consumer technologies is a real challenge for businesses, especially as more and more employees bring personal devices into their corporate IT ecosystem," said Eric Aarrestad, Vice-President of Marketing at WatchGuard. "By offering a way to securely connect iOS devices with WatchGuard security appliances, administrators can say 'yes' to their employees, while knowing their corporate networks, applications and data are safe and secure."

Mobile users often need to connect to corporate resources from high-risk locations, such as free public WiFi hot spots or hotel networks.

By creating a mobile virtual private network (VPN) connection via IPSEC, WatchGuard customers with iOS devices will be able to create fast and easy VPN connections from anywhere to their WatchGuard XTM firewall appliance.

By doing so, an encrypted tunnel is created, which secures data traffic from an iOS device to the corporate network and other behind-the-firewall resources. Furthermore, this allows firewall policies and protections to be applied to authorised mobile users, which means WatchGuard customers with iOS devices will gain the benefits of gateway anti-virus, intrusion prevention and other security services to keep out hackers, spyware, malware and more.

WatchGuard's line of extensible threat management (XTM) security solutions consolidates essential security functions, such as stateful packet firewall, VPN, anti-spam, anti-spyware, anti-virus, content filtering and intrusion prevention in one easy to manage appliance.

The consolidation of these requisite security functions simplifies the security and compliance goals by reducing costs and time to deploy and manage. Due to their extensible and customisable design, customers can select security functions that best meet their network and IT environment.

WatchGuard develops next-generation firewall capabilities that are essential to protect against new forms of attack. WatchGuard XTM solutions offer the ability to identify applications and provide granular control based on individual users or groups.

This gives administrators full contextual awareness and understanding of their networks, services, applications and user activities, which facilitates high security and accurate and effective policy enforcement.