WatchGuard Goes Virtual With Content and Network Security Solutions

WatchGuard Technologies, a Seattle, Washington-based provider of IT security solutions for business, today said its entire portfolio of content and network security products are now being offered as virtualized solutions.

The company is making four editions of its WatchGuard XTMv Virtualized Extensible Threat Management solution available to meet the needs of small, midsize and large-scale distributed environments. The editions include, XTMv Small Office edition, Medium Office, Large Office and Datacenter, all of which provide the same security offered by WatchGuard XTM series hardware appliances, including Application Control, Reputation Enabled Defense, intrusion prevention, gateway anti-virus, web blocking traffic shaping, and more.

The company says that because multiple instances of XTMv can run on a single vSphere hypervisor, the WatchGuard virtual appliance is ideal for managed security services providers (MSSPs), hosting providers, and larger IT organizations who wish to run separate logical firewalls on the same host system.

Additionally, because the WatchGuard XTMv series can manage traffic passing within the virtual infrastructure, and across internal networks between virtual machines in the same cluster or on the same server, XTMv is well suited to implement security policies between applications, user communities or tenants.

WatchGuard is also making four editions of its WatchGuard XCSv Content, DLP, Web and Email Security solution available, including XCSv Small Office edition, Medium Office, Large Office and Large Office XC. These virtual versions also provide the features and level of security offered as their hardware counterparts, including anti-spam and malware protection, zero-hour threat outbreak response and management and reporting features.

The WatchGuard XCSv series can be deployed adjacent to messaging and web servers within the virtual infrastructure, and across internal networks between virtual machines in the same cluster or on the same server, making it well-suited to implement web and messaging security policies between domains, applications, user communities or tenants. For small offices with a single server running consolidated workloads, an instance of XCSv can be run on the same server to provide web, DLP, email and messaging security.

Available this month, both WatchGuard XTMv and XCSv will be supported on VMware vSphere versions 4.1 and 5.0. Pricing on XTMv and XCSv editions vary depending on edition size. The XTMv Small Office edition starts at $750; the XCSv Small Office edition starts at $325 and scales depending on edition sizes and security services and bundles.