WatchGuard Launches Cloud-Based Security Service, Reputation Enabled Defense

By Stephanie Jordan
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This week, WatchGuard Technologies,  a provider of business security solutions, announced the launch of its Reputation Enabled Defense (RED). WatchGuard RED uses a cloud-based WatchGuard reputation server that assigns a reputation score between 1 and 100 to every URL. The lookup leverages a dynamic global database that aggregates data from multiple feeds, including industry-leading anti-virus engines. The company says that when used with WatchGuard extensible threat management (XTM) and extensible content security (XCS) appliances, RED gives businesses and their employees better protection against viruses, malware, spyware, keyloggers, botnets and other Web-based threats, in addition to faster, more productive Web surfing experiences.

“Safe Internet practices are no longer limited to avoiding high-risk Web sites or utilizing black and white lists,” says Charles Kolodgy, research vice president, Security Products at IDC.  “Criminals are becoming more clever at injecting malware into innocuous websites, which forces businesses to scan every packet of network traffic, thus degrading network performance. An ideal solution to address this problem is the utilization of reputation services, which leverages the cloud to mitigate web-based threats before they can bog down the network.”

With RED, URLs with bad reputations are immediately blocked. URLs with unknown reputations are scanned by WatchGuard XTM or XCS appliances to ensure that they are malware free. URLs with good reputations are accelerated through the WatchGuard appliances. Administrators have the ability to configure reputation thresholds.

“WatchGuard is the first and only security vendor to have full URL reputation services integrated with its multifunction, next-generation firewalls,” said Eric Aarrestad, Vice President, Marketing at WatchGuard Technologies.  “While other security vendors promote faster appliances, the focus at WatchGuard is to develop superior security offerings to address the real threats and needs of businesses today.”

Reputation Enabled Defense is available now for all WatchGuard XTM and XCS appliances, for which the company also announced OS upgrades this week. Both XTM and XCS series have new capabilities that WatchGuard says results in increased speed, improved functionality and better protection.

Published June 24, 2010