Leader of Multifunction Firewall Appliances Unveils Extensible Content Security (XCS) Platform to Provide Business E-mail, Web Content, Data Loss Prevention and Cloud-based Protection

18 November 2009 – WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, today announced its entry into the messaging and content security markets with the launch of its new WatchGuard XCS (Extensible Content Security) platform.  As a comprehensive platform for business e-mail and Web 2.0 content security,  WatchGuard XCS combines innovative cloud-based security, data loss prevention and advanced messaging security technologies in 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. 

“Next generation threats are becoming more sophisticated and stealthy.  Because of this, businesses today face unprecedented risk and exposure from e-mail and web-related threats,” said Joe Wang, CEO of WatchGuard Technologies.  “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, multi-faceted and multi-layered defence architecture that is highly effective, extremely efficient and easy to manage.”

The WatchGuard XCS range provides defence-in-depth by combining advanced e-mail inspection with DLP capabilities and IP reputation to combat spam, viruses, malware and other forms of blended threats.  The WatchGuard XCS platform addresses e-mail security needs of small to medium sized businesses up to 1,000 users, with the WatchGuard XCS 170, 370 and 570 series. For mid-tier and enterprise organisations with 10,000 or more users that require advanced messaging and content protection, WatchGuard offers the WatchGuard XCS 770, 970 and 1170 series of appliances.

All of these appliances share best in class quality detection for maximum coverage and accuracy, as well as rapid response capabilities for zero-day threat outbreaks and automatic updates to protect against new forms of crimeware, spyware, rootkits, mobile malware and other malicious attacks. They also provide advanced management and reporting capabilities, which include archiving, on-box reporting, messaging logs, customizable granular policies and reports, TLS encryption and message redundancy.

Additionally, all WatchGuard XCS appliances can take advantage of WatchGuard’s revolutionary in-the-cloud security technology, ReputationAuthority.  With 99.99 percent accuracy, ReputationAuthority eliminates up to 98.3 percent of spam e-mail before it ever gets to a business network by using DNS blacklists, IP volume, behaviour analysis and content inspection.  Given that spam e-mail is a major carrier of viruses, phishing attempts and blended threats, having ReputationAuthority pre-screen and eliminate this unwanted traffic makes business networks, applications and data better protected.

With increasing regulatory and compliance requirements facing mid-tier and enterprise organisations, the WatchGuard XCS 770, 970 and 1170 appliances include sophisticated data loss prevention features, such as transparent remediation to automatically block, quarantine, re-route, blind copy, encrypt or allow messages based on configurable policies, as well as pre-defined compliance dictionaries for GLB, HIPAA, PCI DSS and others.  Seamless e-mail encryption secures confidential messages to any recipient without requiring a dedicated server, while e-profiling and data discovery allow administrators to classify sensitive data and dynamic on-demand clustering and queue replication provide additional redundancy and scalability.

According to market research, the estimated total addressable market for messaging and web content security is $6.8 billion for 2010, and is expected to grow at 11.2 percent per year.  Similar in size, the addressable market for WatchGuard’s current family of multifunction firewall and SSL VPN solutions is $4.7 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 9.9 percent.  With today’s launch of the WatchGuard XCS platform, WatchGuard nearly doubles its reach to an addressable market of $11.5 billion, which is expected to hit $15 billion by 2012.

Similarly, the growth of e-mail and web-related threats is expected to increase exponentially.  WatchGuard security analysts predict that messaging and web-based content threats will increase by a factor of 3 in 2010.  Contributing to this, WatchGuard security analysts predict that polymorphic viruses, botnets and blended threats will propagate in new ways, fuelled by social networking, collaboration applications and other Web 2.0 venues.

“With the expected growth of new messaging and web-based threats, businesses should review and evaluate their security posture to make sure that they have capable, flexible and scalable protection against these new threats,” said Brian Burke, Program Director, Security Products, at IDC. “By embracing a holistic security architecture, businesses can reduce their risk and exposure to these new forms of threats.”

Pricing and Availability
The WatchGuard XCS appliances will be available from WatchGuard channel partners around the world within 30 days. For small to medium sized businesses, the WatchGuard XCS appliances start at $2,475 with no per user license fee limitation.  The enterprise-grade XCS appliances range from $8,000 to $60,000.  UK prices are based on the current exchange rates and more information is available at www.watchguard.com.