CRN 2007 Products Of The Year

By Staff
6:00 AM EST Thu. Dec. 06, 2007
Security Product of the Year: SonicWall TZ 180

Threats to the network continue to increase and the number of solution providers that need to dive into Unified Threat Management for small and mid-size businesses is jumping as well.

Simply put: security is a bigger deal than ever before. And that’s why the CRN Test Center chose the SonicWall TZ 180 as the Security Product of the Year for 2007. The device is capable of taking on network threats, scanning files and preventing network intrusions without sapping network bandwidth.

Importantly for VARs and integrators who work inside SMB accounts, the SonicWall TZ 180 is pretty simple to install. It’s wizard-driven once the appliance is registered and the vendor has a portal, MySonicWall.com, where solution providers can manage a variety of UTM products and manage multiple licenses.

The TZ 180 is a second-generation UTM product. SonicWall has tweaked the software so it’s able to keep up with business-class cable and DSL connections --now business-critical in the SMB segment. TZ 180 works by initiating a deep-scanning process of files entering the network, checking the packets for signatures that match its database, and managing incoming threats. In addition, the TZ 180 is able to provide stateful packet inspection.

With all of this, SonicWall has taken security technology that was once the province of the largest enterprises and scaled it to fit smaller and mid-sized deployments.

Slide Show: 10 Best Products Of 2007

We were also impressed by support that is bundled with the product. SonicWall’s TotalSecure solution for the TZ 180 includes one year support for AV, antispyware gateway (NYSE:GTW) and intrusion-prevention services. SonicWall works with solution providers during subscription periods. The TZ 180 also offers a year of content-filtering services, which includes protection against phishing attacks. SonicWall updates its appliances regularly with lists of phishing sites.

So if you’ve got an SMB’s network to protect, there’s no better choice than the TZ 180.

-Edward F. Moltzen and Mario Morejon