WatchGuard Unveils New Platform

By Stephanie Jordan
in

Yesterday from Interop IT Expo and Conference in New York City, WatchGuard Technologies, which acquired BorderWare Technologies in August, announced its launch into the messaging and content security markets.

According to the company, the new WatchGuard XCS (Extensible Content Security) platform is “a comprehensive platform for business email and Web 2.0 content security, that combines innovative cloud-based security, data loss prevention and advanced messaging security technologies into a single, easy to use appliance that defends businesses against phishing attacks, identity theft, viruses, malware, data loss, and other forms of network, application and data threats.”

The BorderWare acquisition allows WatchGuard to enter into the estimated $6.8 billion messaging and Web content security market for 2010. “Next generation threats are becoming more sophisticated and stealthy. Because of this, businesses today face unprecedented risk and exposure from email and Web-related threats,” says Joe Wang, CEO of WatchGuard. “By combining WatchGuard’s state of the art multifunction firewall appliances with the new XCS line of messaging and content security solutions, businesses gain a complete, multifaceted and multi-layered defense architecture that is highly effective, extremely efficient and easy to manage.”

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst of network security with Infonetics Research, commented at the time of the acquisition: “The threat landscape is changing dramatically and customers are demanding easy to use security solutions with advanced firewall, VPN, Web, and messaging security. The combined company will be well positioned to meet rigorous customer requirements.” With this Interop announcement, it looks like WatchGuard is ready to join in the messaging arena with WatchGuard XCS appliances becoming available from its channel partners within 30 days.

Published November 19, 2009