UTM- Growth driver for SMBs

Making protection easy for the IT staff, Unified Threat Management (UTM) products bring value proposition for smaller organizations as it is low on cost and easy to manage appliance that can replace multiple security products running on separate servers. Many small and mid-sized organizations have limited IT staff and limited financial resources to devote to security. So, many of the small businesses opt for UTM security appliances to run the businesses smoothly without any fear of breach of security.

According to Gartner’s report, the market for UTM appliances is growing rapidly and will continue to grow at a compound rate of about 15 percent for the next five years. India SMBs are major contributors in increasing the demand for IT security in the network security market. Dinesh Verma, Director, Consularis Technology Solutions feel, “The need for network security among the SMBs has augmented due to the fact that today various forms of broadband facilitate greater usage of business traffic through web and mobile services. The LAN based technologies such as 3G and Wi-Fi enhance the need for securing the data residing on these networks.”

Emphasizing the importance of UTM deployment for the SMBs D.K. Bajaj, Director, D.M. Systems informs, “Today SMBs are doing business with enterprises or communicating with enterprises. Lots of virus activities like Trojan, phishing or malicious mails are being curbed by UTM deployments.” He adds, “By adopting UTM services an SMB can obtain enterprise level network protection and reduce the affects of evolving threats. It is an affordable approach for the SMBs.”

UTM offers standard network stateful firewall, Virtual Private Network (VPN) support, anti-malware, content filtering, email security, data loss prevention systems etc. Preferring hassle free security devices, Prachie Narang, SISL Infotech shares, “Smooth functioning, internet security, integration, convenience, email spam filtering, and protection from every threat are the key advantages that UTM delivers. The foremost benefit is that many vital functions are confined to one box instead of the common two or three box systems. UTM firewall reduces the complexity by unifying each component saving small business time and money.”

Another big benefit that the SMBs enjoy is the reduced cost as less equipment are needed to be purchased and thus less money is spent. However, throwing light on the operatability issue Bajaj retort, “Most of the vendors are not fully trained in deployment and hence customer could not use the full features of UTM due to non-expertise. Customers expectations is not rightly set as he thinks that now everything is done after the deployment and all the perimeter security is set. There is no check on the implementation by the vendor as lack of audit systems. If an audit system is made compulsory then each and every installation of the UTM is verified.”

Despite of its operatability issues as has highlighted by Bajaj, UTM devices have sure come a long way since 2004. The new innovations in architecture, network administrators, no longer have to settle for mediocre security in a centralized device. The next generations UTMs with varied flexible features are easy to use, manage, update and upgrade offering highest standards of data privacy.