WatchGuard Sets New Standards for Firewalls with Application Control

NEW YORK, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Interop -- WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, today raised the bar of what constitutes a firewall by unveiling WatchGuard Application Control.  With WatchGuard Application Control, businesses now gain in-depth, granular control over Web 2.0 applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and hundreds more.  Not only does WatchGuard Application Control protect against the next generation of threats that leverage these popular applications, now businesses can rein in how individual employees use such applications, directly from the corporate firewall.

By leveraging more than 2,300 unique application signatures, WatchGuard Application Control enables the firewall to identify and control more than 1,500 applications.  This level of control gives businesses new found freedom to align business needs with IT and security policies.  By doing so, businesses gain greater efficiencies and improved productivity, and administrators gain unprecedented visibility and control over applications traversing their networks.  Available Q4 2010 and starting at $155 for a one-year subscription, WatchGuard Application Control will be available for all WatchGuard XTM series of multifunction firewall appliances.  

"The explosion of new applications entering business networks creates havoc for administrators who need to protect business assets while simultaneously need to support agile and efficient work environments," said Tim Helming, Director of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies.  "For example, many organizations today may want to allow use of Facebook, but not sub-applications, such as Mafia Wars, FarmVille, or Facebook Chat.  With WatchGuard Application Control, businesses gain a better handle on reducing risks right down to individual employees and the myriad applications that they bring into their networks."

With WatchGuard Application Control, administrators can select which applications to control from 13 major categories.  For example, within the instant messaging category, administrators can manage popular IM applications, such as QQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk and more.  Other categories include: Mail (HotMail, Gmail), Social Media (Facebook, MySpace), Peer-to-Peer (Gnutella, Bittorrent), Remote Access Terminals (TeamViewer, GoToMyPC), Databases (MS SQL), File Transfer (Megaupload), VoIP (Skype), Streaming Media (YouTube, Hulu), Network Management (MS Update) and Tunnel Applications used to bypass firewalls (Ultrasurf, Avoidr).

"Having the ability to monitor, manage and control which applications go through our network is a tremendous advantage," said Jason Omens, IT Manager at BuzzBee Company, a strategic marketing firm.  "With WatchGuard Application Control, BuzzBee employees can utilize the latest Web 2.0 apps in a way that is productive and highly secure without risking our network to new forms of attacks or malware."  

WatchGuard XTM OS 11.4 – Additional Enhancements Beyond Application Control

WatchGuard Application Control will be available with the next WatchGuard XTM OS update, WatchGuard XTM 11.4.  In addition to Application Control, WatchGuard XTM 11.4 also comes packed with a variety of new enhancements for better security, system performance and ease of use.

A more powerful and efficient IPS/IDS engine will give businesses even greater protection against hackers and unwanted intruders, and new authentication enhancements will empower administrators better than ever before to construct, enforce, monitor and report on security policies that are organized by users and groups rather than by IP subnets, hosts, host ranges, or network zones.

Ever improving on ease of use and system management, WatchGuard will provide administrators with a new configuration history and roll-back feature, which makes management of multi-box environments with multiple configurations even easier, and new e-mail notification of ready reports, as well as logging enhancements, all make system management easier and more comprehensive.

WatchGuard XTM 11.4 is free to WatchGuard XTM customers with a current LiveSecurity service contract.  It will be available Q4, 2010.  More information about WatchGuard Application Control and XTM 11.4 is available at http://www.watchguard.com/appcontrol.

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

Since 1996, WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. has been the advanced technology leader of business security solutions, providing mission-critical protection to hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide.  The WatchGuard family of wired and wireless unified threat management appliances, messaging, content security and SSL VPN remote access solutions provide extensible network, application and data protection, as well as unparalleled network visibility, management and control.  WatchGuard products are backed by WatchGuard LiveSecurity® Service, an innovative support, maintenance, and education program.  WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle and has offices serving North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit http://www.watchguard.com/.

WatchGuard is a registered trademark of WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.  All other marks are property of their respective owners.

SOURCE WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.