Reflecting an ongoing need for more application security, broadband Internet provider Dalton Utilities has picked up security gear from ServGate Technologies Inc. over Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) PIX firewalls at its Georgia data center.
Dalton Utilities, which serves customers in northwestern Georgia, implemented ServGate's EdgeForce Accel application gateways to combat spam and viruses across the company's OptiLink fiber-to-the-home network. According to John Davies, Dalton's assistant manager for telecommunications, the PIX firewall had not been meeting the company's requirements: "We were having some problems with functionality there were a lot of VPN and IPsec problems."
Then there were the financial considerations. Davies says, "The price difference between deploying a number of PIXs and a number of ServGates was significant: The PIX was easily a third more expensive."
A spokesman for Cisco said that the San Jose, Calif.-based company does not comment on competitive business transactions. Cisco has been on a mission to beef up its security portfolio acquiring a diverse range of smaller, specialist security vendors (see Cisco's Security Spree Continues, Cisco Buys Psionic, and Cisco Completes Okena Buy).
The EdgeForce Accel offers virus scanning, spam filtering, Web caching, URL filtering, and VPN features. It uses a technology called Full Context Inspection (FCI), which screens packet contents and blocks anything that is suspicious before it reaches the home user.
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