BANGALORE, INDIA: WatchGuard Technologies, Inc., a provider in unified threat management solutions for small and medium businesses, across the world, believes that UTM appliances play a major role in security best practices.

The latest report by Aberdeen states that UTM will continue to grow as more and more organisations are adopting UTM.

Highlights from Aberdeen report:

· Risks are increasing – Aberdeen notes that on average more than 120 new vulnerability disclosures are made each week (nearly 90 percent of which could be exploited remotely), and more than 400,000 new examples of malware were identified in the last year.

· More and more organisations are adopting UTM – In Aberdeen's recent study, "Unified Threat Management: What's In, What's Next, and Why," Best-in-class organisations (top 20 percent based on performance), in comparison to Laggards (bottom 30 percent), are 80 percent more likely to consolidate IT security in a single device or service, i.e. adopt a UTM strategy.

· Costs and complexity are top UTM drivers – Across all respondents, reducing cost and reducing complexity are the top drivers for adopting UTM.

· UTM gains quantified – Best-in-class companies using a UTM approach realised the following gains in the last 12 months over those with lagging performance:

o 20 percent reduction in actual threat/vulnerability related incidents

o 14 percent reduction in audit deficiencies

o 11 percent reduction in unscheduled downtime

o 5 percent reduction in total associated staff

· Best security practices – Compared to Laggards, organisations are nearly three-times more likely to automate enforcement of policies, more than two-times more likely to generate alerts, and about 50 percent more likely to block activities that violate policies.

· Sustaining best security – Knowing how to respond, responding quickly and efficiently, and not having to respond again in the future are directly linked with driving down ongoing management costs related to sustaining security and compliance.

· UTM and flexibility – Flexibility is what UTM is all about. An organisation may initially deploy a UTM solution to address a specific problem, such as spam, but in doing so, it establishes a flexible path for future expansion.