Asic revs up new security appliances

Broadband access specialist Zyxel last week launched its ZyWall unified threat management (UTM) appliances for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The move followed the recent release of UTM appliances from Symantec and SonicWall.

The three Zywall models include capabilities for firewall, virtual private network, load balancing, bandwidth management, Kaspersky antivirus protection, web filtering, intrusion detection and pre- vention, and anti-spam filtering.

Zyxel’s Mark Walker said, “Performance of these UTM appliances is what limited market uptake before, because compared to routing and firewalling, content filtering uses nearly a thousand times more processor resources.”

To give adequate performance, Zyxel’s appliances incorporate a network security PC Card containing an application specific integrated circuit (Asic) designed to increase throughput twenty-fold, Zyxel said.

The three internet security appliances, the ZyWall 5, 35 and 70, can service 10, 30 and 100 users respectively and come with the Zyxel Network Operating System version 4 (ZyNOS 4.0).

However, four of the features have licensing costs associated with them. The antivirus and IDP is available as a bundle starting at £270 + VAT per year and the anti-spam and content filtering licensing start at £65 + VAT and £49 + VAT per year respectively.

The ZyWall 5, 35 and 70 are available now priced at £269 + VAT, £569 + VAT and £919 + VAT respectively, with the PC Card Asic, which is required to run the antivirus and IDP functions.

“We’ll be launching a UTM appliance for larger enterprises next year,” added Walker.