The Network Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers
Buyer’s guide
Protect your business Every organisation needs protection from ransomware, phishing, hacker attacks and worse. Dave Mitchell tries out the appliances that can keep you safe with minimal management
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mall and medium businesses may be taking a well-earned breather as the pandemic recedes, but you can’t let your guard down when it comes to data protection. The past few years have seen reduced investment in network security, along with big changes in working practices. That’s created plenty of new opportunities for cybercriminals: in its 2021 Cyber Threat Analysis report, ISP Beaming tracked a steady increase in attacks over the last quarter of 2021, with UK businesses subjected to 165,933 breach attempts over the threemonth period – an average of one every 47 seconds. This isn’t a threat to take lightly. In March, the UK government estimated that the average cost to British businesses of a security breach is £4,200. But there are ways to ensure your systems aren’t compromised – and they’re a lot cheaper than dealing with a successful attack. This month we review unified threat management (UTM) appliances from four established names in the world of network security: DrayTek, Sophos, WatchGuard and Zxyel. All offer enterprise-class protection at 92
SMB-friendly prices, and we put each one through its paces in our lab to help you choose the best protection.
All together now
UTM appliances are ideal for busy SMBs, as they provide a full spread of security functions in a single box. Along with a business-grade firewall, most provide intrusion prevention systems (IPS), active threat detection and all-round protection against viruses and ransomware, including web, email and application scanning.
BELOW DrayTek’s Vigor 2866ax features a high-performance Wi-Fi 6 access point
Integrating everything into one device also keeps administration simple. All the appliances on review can be managed from a user-friendly web console, with centralised monitoring and easy access to all features. Malware signatures and IPS profiles can be automatically updated with no intervention, and since the UTM sits at the perimeter of your network, with all inbound and outbound traffic passing through it, it’s simple to apply company-wide security policies and be sure that nothing slips through the net.
Power and performance
While most UTMs offer a broad range of security functions, they vary in their throughput capacity. This is something to consider up front: hopefully your UTM will last you for many years, and you don’t want an underpowered unit that will slow to a
