Unified Threat Management

Unified Threat Management Takes on Unified Communications

If you are going to build an ‘all-in-one’ security appliance, you also need to adapt with the times and add functionality to keep up with new attacks and technologies. Otherwise, organizations will end up with a UTM (unified threat management) solution, plus a mengerie of one-off solutions that undermine the purpose of having UTM protection in the first place.

WatchGuard is keeping up with the pace of technology, evolving their UTM appliance into an XTM (extensible threat management) appliance. In addition to standard enterprise security measures such as deep packet inspection (DPI) firewalls, spam blocking, URL and content filtering, anti-virus protection and intrusion prevention and detection systems (IPS/IDS), WatchGuard’s XTM 1050 includes protection for VoIP networks and VoIP communications.

According to their press release “WatchGuard recognizes that as more enterprise and mid-market businesses adopt VoIP, they open themselves to a new series of VoIP protocol exploits. By utilizing a host of high security technologies, including network address translation, port obfuscation, and SIP and H.323 proxies, the WatchGuard XTM 1050 becomes an ideal security appliance to thwart would-be attackers of VoIP and network systems.” You can read more about the XTM 1050 and the evolution of UTM security in this ITBusinessEdge article.

Unified Threat Management

It seems that the world of information technology and information security is pursuing a path to harmony and cooperation. The current buzz word is “unity”. We have unified communications- converging IP networking, email, voicemail, voice communications, and instant messaging to provide an integrated communications framework. Another area of unity is in threat management. Traditionally, organizations have a variety of separate security devices and applications. They may have a firewall appliance at the perimeter, with some sort of IDS or IPS appliance between the firewall and the network. They may have an antimalware appliance, or have some antimalware software installed on email gateway servers. Perhaps, they even have an antispam appliance or application. Continued »