Symantec on Monday expanded its line of gateway security appliances to target small businesses on budgets with little or no IT staff or experience.
The new 300 series of Symantec's Security Gateway--the models include the 320, the 360, and the 360R--target small businesses that want to move up from consumer-level firewall, antivirus, and intrusion-detection software to a more robust, enterprise-style, appliance-based defense, said George Sluz, the product manager for the new appliance family.
"We're trying to raise the security bar for small business by upgrading them from consumer-level [security] to a business-class product," said Sluz. "But we're not just scaling our 3400 series [for the enterprise] down and packaging it in a smaller box. We've redesigned functions and made them appropriate for small business. They're less complex overall and easier to install."
All the devices in the 300 family integrate firewall, intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, antivirus policy enforcement, content-filtering, and IPsec-compliant VPN capabilities, according to Symantec. All defenses--such as intrusion detection, which automatically blocks data packets detected as malicious, including Trojan horse attempts to scan ports--are automatically enabled by default, said Sluz, one way the appliances circumvent small business's lack of IT expertise.
"There's not a lot customers have to do to get this running," promised Sluz.
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