WatchGuard Technologies has been a consistent leader in the UTM space and has made significant enhancements in its Technologies and partner engagement. Fabrizio Croce, Area Director, SEMEA at Watchguard Technologies discusses the trends and the company’s focus

Do you see UTM adoptions still on the rise?

The UTM appliances are becoming more powerful, faster and are available at lesser costs. Earlier generations may have been unable to support advances services which is no longer the case and these can handle new kinds of threats including APT.

It is not easy to be dealing with different vendors for different security solutions. The UTM takes away that hassle and brings a single point reference, a one point of control.

How do you see Watchguard faring in the region?

We have a growing market share. It is however a very competitive market. Our appliances deliver high performance and are easy to deploy and use. Even without expertise in networking and security, our appliances can be easily deployed.

We are one of the Market leaders from the Gartner report. WatchGuard has been named a “Leader” in Gartner’s 2014 Unified Threat Management (UTM) Magic Quadrant for the fifth consecutive year. WatchGuard was also named a “Champion,” and has been awarded the “Value” and “Trend Setter” awards for its XTM Series in Info-Tech Research Group’s 2014 NGFW (Next Generation Firewall) Vendor Landscape Report. We got the NSS Labs recommendation for the XTM 1525 as one of the top-rated Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW) based on a real-world comparative analysis. According to the report, the XTM 1525 blocked 96.7 percent of attacks against server applications, 98.7 percent of attacks against client applications, and 97.8 percent overall. It proved effective against all evasion techniques tested and passed all the stability and reliability tests.

How do such third party reports help?

There is a lot of attention to Analyst reports here. This kind of third party validation is critical to our customers in instilling confidence they are choosing market leading solutions.

We have the capability to provide both UTM and the NGFW with the same appliance. Sometimes what the analysts say is far from accurate but they give directions to the industry. NGFW only includes IPS and application control in addition. In larger organizations, IPS and AV are separate solutions with several vendors and appliances.

What are some of the unique features of the WatchGuard Firebox M440 that you showcased at GITEX?

We launched the WatchGuard Firebox M440 which delivers 25 1 Gb Ethernet ports, eight that deliver Power over Ethernet (PoE), plus two 10 Gb SFP+ (fiber) ports. The Firebox M440 with its multiple ports removes the need for complex configurations such as VLANs and simplifies the critical process of applying traffic-appropriate policies across multiple network segments.

We also announced Firebox M400 and M500 appliances, based on the latest Intel Pentium and Intel Celeron Processors. These are specifically engineered for mid-size and distributed enterprises, which are struggling to effectively and affordably secure networks in the face of explosive growth in bandwidth rates, connection speeds and encrypted traffic. These solutions are powerful to run all their engines in parallel without any bottlenecks.

What have been the advances in your visibility tool? How has it been received by customers?

WatchGuard’s visibility solution, Dimension, first launched in late 2013, provides real-time, single-pane-of-glass view of the effect each policy is having on that segment’s traffic. The latest version of dimension includes the industry’s first interactive, integrated policy mapping capability for Unified Threat Management (UTM) and Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) appliances. Policy Map provides a complete view of traffic flow and policy impact across the entire network and also provide the ability to quickly filter or drill down for additional detail and analysis. It aggregates disparate information about policies, interfaces, applications and related traffic flows, and presents it in a simple, intuitive and interactive visualization dashboard. It can be used for policy audits, to find active and misconfigured policies, to identify unusual/abnormal traffic patterns, to visually check if firewall policies or configuration changes have the intended impact on traffic patterns and much more. It comes free on any WatchGuard UTM or NGFW platform.

WatchGuard Dimension has been received well by customers and has seen strong market adoption. Customers have been using the network security visibility tool to monitor and gain critical and timely insights about network security threats, bandwidth and Internet usage, as well as related traffic trends.

Discuss your current partner program?

From the channel program perspective, we offer Watchguard One as our partner program. It ties higher margins to higher customer service levels and allows resellers to get unprecedented combined discounts of more than 70 percent. The program leverages a value-based model that places additional focus on reseller certification and training in addition to simply volume sales.  It includes additional profit sharing partner programs, such as Deal Registration and Security Pays.

WatchGuardONE delivers a variety of membership levels including Silver, Gold and Platinum and the difference is the number of employee certified on our Technologies. Discounts and rebates vary depending on the partner’s level of commitment.

The program has greater stress on skill and certifications than sales targets. We are focusing on very skilled partners that can constantly work on our products and support our customers. We are not keen on working with partners that are only opportunity focused and active occasionally.

How have the software versions of your solutions been accepted?

We have software versions of our appliances for the virtual deployments. They have exactly the same features. You save on the hardware costs, space and cooling costs. You can choose to deploy a mix of hardware and virtual appliances, operating together and managed from a common centralized management platform. There is a shift in favor of the virtual but it varies from region to region.

WatchGuard virtualized solutions address the challenges that are faced by enterprises today, and how to tackle them successfully. Through our virtual appliances XTMv (Extendible Threat Management) and XCSv (Extensible Content Security) we offer virtual security deployment options for businesses of all sizes. This is important because virtual environments cannot depend on physical infrastructure alone for protection. Whether organizations are looking to virtualize traditional gateway firewalls or integrate virtual security with messaging and application servers.

Discuss how you enable all your modules to offer best capabilities?

In our devices, we decided to have best of breed modules. Our UTM and NGFW security appliances run on Fireware, a complete security platform designed to run full versions of the leading security engines in every category. Our best-of-breed security tools include DLP, APT, Intrusion Prevention, Reputation Enabled Defense, spamBlocker, Gateway AntiVirus, WebBlocker, Application Control and Packet Filtering. Where we aren’t the experts, we have partnerships with best of breed suppliers to include their solution. This is the case for AV solutions as is for IPS and Application control. For AV solutions, we have Kaspersky and AVG. For IPS and Application control, we have Trend Micro. We are very careful about what the market is demanding. Now we are working to enhance our wireless capabilities such as Hotspot services, for hospitality, airports etc. We continue to refresh our boxes, ensuring they are always offering state of the art technologies.