They shrunk the firewall: security software and appliance vendor Untangle this week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco debuted a five-inch square firewall that it claims is the smallest of any network security appliance.

The u25 is aimed at small businesses with under 50 users as well as the "prosumer" -- consultants or other professionals working out of their homes, retail shops, and Wi-Fi cafes, says Amy Abatangle, CMO of Untangle.

Abatangle says the u25 is relatively simple to configure and allows users to create their own widgets and comes with a more modern interface. “Others come with pre-configured reports, which are a little bit limiting,” she says. It's a plug-and-play setup, and is priced at half of what Untangle charges for its current lowest-end firewall.

“Home networks are now getting to the complexity level of a small business,” with multiple devices running at once, such as television sets with Apple TV and other IoT appliances, she says. “Insecure endpoints are coming online,” says Abatangle, and “the weak spot is the Wi-Fi router.” 

“IT Pros have been asking us for years to be able to run Untangle at home,” says Abatangle. “This was to address that need."

According to Untangle, the u25 has unified threat management (UTM) capabilities including features of the most recent Untangle NG Firewall release, version 12. It can manage Internet traffic by application, website, port, protocol on a per-user or per-group basis. The u25 also includes virtual private network (VPN) capability plus captive portal for use with the Wi-Fi model. In addition, the device provides bandwidth control, WAN balancing, and failover.