Netgear's just announced ProSecure Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances aim to identify threats in the cloud, block them at the gateway, and to do so at prices aggressively aimed at small business budgets, even in tight economic times.Netgear's new line of UTM appliances, priced from $375-$550, is intended as a response to both a shifted threat environment and the reality of the budget constraints smaller (under 30 users) businesses face, according to Jason Leung, senior product manager for SMB security at Netgear.

The threat environment's shift, Leung said in a conversation with bMighty recently, from a push strategy (threats coming at your business from outside) to a pull strategy (threats brought into your network from the Web, e-mail, etc., by your employees)has meant a dramatic increase in the exposure of small businesses.

"Pull affects everybody," Leung says, "not just the large businesses that hackers intially targeted."

Te Netgear solution is a device positioned at the business gateway, with cloud-based real-time Web analysis and url filtering, along with Sophos anti-malware, Mailshell anti-spam and spam analysis, as well as firewall and intrusion protection. Additionally, the appliance supports p2P and IM monitoring as a means of enforcing business usage policies.

Leung feels that the real-time cloud-based scanning is a vital component of effective protection. "The cloud affords us the ability to understand threats in real-time, as they appear," he says, "as opposed to more limited anti-virus signature sets or anti-spam techniques."

He feels that the company's Stream Scanning technology enables real-time scanning, identification, and filtering of far more attack signatures than traditional anti-malware and anti-spam approaches, and does so with minimal latency or performance demands on the business network.

The ProSecure UTM appliances for small businesses will be available in July; price includes one-year subscription to security services based on number of users.

Leung notes as well that since subscription renewals for the second and subsequent years are as much as 55% lower than the initial buy-in, which covers the appliance as well as the subs.

Netgear's aggressive pricing (for the level of services promised in addition to the gateway harwdare) makes these worth a look by under 30-user busineses, I believe. The company's offering a Free 30 Day UTM Trial here.

If you take a look, let me know what you think.

And don't forget about bMighty's April 29th SMB Security On A Budget Onlie Event.

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