Enterprises in India are showing willingness to leverage technology at their disposal to protect their most vital corporate assets from external and internal trouble. As a result, IT security has become and will continue to remain de facto. The challenge lies in using the right security component in warding off threats, filtering content, and keeping organizations safe. As companies are in pursuit of the panacea to their security requirements, there is a tilt towards looking at a holistic, cost-effective, durable solution instead of a makeshift approach.

Vishal Dhupar, MD, Symantec India agrees, “Today, IT security is not only limited to threats and attacks. In fact, finding smart, cost-effective ways to ensure that corporate data is kept secure are key to many companies’ success. As such, companies often turn to specialist security partners for assistance to find the right way to address such issues.” Adds Manish Bansal, Marketing Manager, Websense Software Services India, “Organizations today have a requirement for various point solutions to talk to each other for security to be effective and coordinated. There are increasing incidences of blended attacks (e-mail and web combined) and complex targeted security attacks involving different kinds of communication platforms.”

A One-stop Shop
In the midst of the traditional antivirus and firewalls, the platform seems all set for Unified Threat Management (UTM) that is slowly but surely emerging as a viable proposition for enterprises. Before the UTM revolution, enterprises deployed multiple security software programs, including a firewall, antivirus software, antispam appliance, and URL gateway. These programs and devices have their specific purposes but implementing so many separate systems is not cost effective. Enterprises would be dedicating huge resources to manage individual security appliances.

The beauty of the UTM approach, as experts see, is its promise of an integrated, total, streamlined management approach without compromising on comprehensive security features, thanks to a unified operating system and management console. UTM solutions can provide one-stop security architecture with features equivalent to that offered by a host of security appliances. This, according to reports, can dramatically save time on having to be trained on multiple software, as well as increasing responsiveness and effectiveness of system administrators in managing attacks. Besides, UTM can also enable swifter migration, more centralized management, and reduction of operating costs.

Says Vishak Raman, Country Manager, Fortinet India, “The sophistication of Internet threats along with the technology evolution of multi-threat security appliances and the more complex management of network infrastructure called for increased adoption of integrated UTM solutions from enterprises.”

Adds Shubhomoy Biswas, Country Director – India and SAARC, SonicWALL, “As the networks crossed geographical boundaries and as increasingly more applications being run on them, there was a growing realization to protect and secure the information flowing over the networks and this fuelled the market’s growth. The security market is growing at a faster rate than the rest of the IT market. Security still remains a top IT priority for most organizations.” Agrees Mathew Jacob, CEO of Bangalore’s Iwire Network Design, a SonicWALL partner, “UTM is a step above the conventional firewall features. The multiple functionality of the UTM appliance can be the justification for replacing older and more basic firewalls with the new systems. In simpler words, I can say that UTM is just like a blanket security cover.”

Market Claimants

Market Claimants
The UTM market makes an interesting analysis. According to IDC, the worldwide UTM market should have been worth $2 billion around 2008 and UTM security systems should have outgrown the traditional firewall/VPN appliances sector garnering 58 percent of the overall market. A global UTM market that is growing at a CAGR of over 35 percent, slowdown notwithstanding, the sale of UTM appliances is set to rake in the moolah in the Indian market, with a huge demand coming in from the government, BFSI, large IT houses, manufacturing conglomerates, etc.

While Cisco, IBM, and Juniper are players in the UTM space, there are others who are claiming their stake in this market. Fortinet has been the biggest propounders of the UTM story in India. The vendor has been pushing UTM on an aggressive note with MSPs, telcos, and the public sector being its biggest buyers in 2008. IDC’s Q3 2008 report announced Fortinet as the overall worldwide leader in factory revenue in UTM, ahead of the likes of Cisco, Juniper, Crossbeam, Check Point, SonicWALL,etc.

Interestingly, a recent Frost and Sullivan report had adjudged that SonicWALL India capitalized on the perceived slowdown and gained more market share than any other security vendor in India, and the vendor has enjoyed 100 percent year-on-year growth in its domestic business. According to the company, over one million SonicWALL appliances have been shipped through its global network of channel partners to date. The company has about 2200 customers in India. Says Biswas of SonicWALL, “Our E-Class offerings delivering high-performance UTM without compromising speed or security are also seeing great success in the Indian market.”

Check Point, another claimant to the UTM tag, has also spoken extensively about its roadmap. Last year, Check Point advanced its flagship VPN-1 brand of gateway security solutions by releasing two new lines focused on UTM and high performance security. Also, the acquisition of Nokia’s security appliance business is expected to be completed by March. “The current year would see an enhanced line of security appliances from Check Point,” promises Bhaskar Bakthavatsalu, Country Manager, Check Point Software Technologies, India & SAARC.

In a step further, the vendor is combining its solutions to take advantage of virtualization while maintaining a high level of security. Bakthavatsalu adds, “Check Point’s VPN-1 Virtual Edition enables you to deploy the same technology used to secure your physical network to secure your virtual environments.” All said and done, industry watchers, however, see an uphill task for Check Point as it faced a difficult time last year, struggling to integrate the right management tools onto its offerings, thus giving way to Cisco and Juniper to gain ground in UTM.

Elitcore Technologies is perhaps the first homegrown Indian company to provide a UTM appliance, when, in 2005, it added firewall, gateway antivirus, and antispam features to its web content filtering software. Its core product, Cyberoam, also incorporates a capability that lets it pinpoint the exact user involved in a security breach, rather than only identifying the IP address. Company sources say these new appliances represent an unprecedented combination of exceptional performance using multi-core processor technology that lets Cyberoam security appliances achieve high UTM throughputs in comparison to hardware-based ASIC solutions.

The way Ahead
With so many offerings in the market, deploying a UTM platform is actually a business consideration rather than a pure IT decision. Perhaps the most compelling factor in favour of the UTM wave is the lower TCO and the ease of deployment promise that it makes. UTM is also witnessing the discovery of newer utility patterns. Many enterprises, which were using UTM appliances to secure their branch level networks, are now contemplating to secure their data centers and other core IT infrastructure with it. Fortinet and SonicWALL are working closely with managed service providers, thus making UTM very appealing to the companies not willing to spend too much on the infrastructure, bringing to focus the fact that the success of the UTM market is also dependent on whether it views the SMB as a potential.

Says Bakthavatsalu of Check Point “The current business environment will see SMBs to be more cautious than ever before. They would continue to adopt UTMs. The market would witness an increased adoption of ‘in the cloud’ services. The price- sensitive SMB segment will move towards MSS, which will enable them to cut down on capex and also provide them with experts to manage their security infrastructure.”

Adds Raman of Fortinet, “External factors like threats, business needs, and economic slowdown are forcing customers to look at having a blended security gear at the perimeter. Also with an exponential increase in new applications being deployed, constant demand of ROI from the CXO/CFO community, UTM seems to be a natural choice.”

Does the ‘UTM is the way forward’ concept signal the end of the stand-alone security market? Vendors not playing in the UTM market have a different explanation. Vikas Desai, Lead Technology Consultant, India & SAARC, RSA, Security Division of EMC rationalizes, “UTM surely has a bright future but is still not the final answer to all the security woes of an organization. UTM focuses mainly on the edge security although it is smarter than a conventional IPS or IDS. But it is still concerned about threats from outside the organization. It misses out on a major part of the security challenge which is the insider threat.” Bansal of Websense says, “It depends on an organization’s preference: best-of-breed or all-in-one box.”

There are others who feel that at the periphery of the UTM discussion there is also scope for sub-set markets such as DLP, IPS, WSG, and IRM to flourish. Dhupar of Symantec India observes, “Security touches every part of the business — from the CEO and board members to HR, finance, and legal departments that need to manage compliance. Given these dynamics, It is observed that while traditional segments like antivirus continue to do well, new age technologies like DLP and endpoint security are catching up.” Desai of RSA concurs with the pitch, “I would say IRM is the way forward for organizations. Drilling down to technology, a strong and effective access and data control would be the key. Two of the solutions in these areas would be risk-based authentication and data leak prevention.” Agrees Venkata Ramana Murthy, Prime Mover at 22by7, “The individual, niche component of UTM functionality — say a component filtering mechanism — may not necessarily be superior in performance to that of a niche vendor.”

Nevertheless, the channels are fairly receptive to the UTM idea. This is an emerging technology that throws up new business opportunities for them at a time when conventional technologies are not getting them sufficient margins or giving cross-selling opportunities anymore. Murthy of 22by7 adds, “UTM is a successful single point alternative that I can propose to customers.” Jayessh Mehta, CMD of Future Business Tech, believes that UTM is the way forward, particularly for the SMB. He says, “This is a discussion that has the potential. Enterprises are better off that way.”

With large-scale education and awareness among customers and partners, UTM may turn out to be the next step forward in the security market.