In the current uncertain economic climate, we see the need for businesses to work smarter and to do more with less. This is the first newsletter in a series that will examine ways and means of reducing costs and improving efficiencies while continuing to support the business. This edition features two technologies that can help - UTM & business grade VoIP.

Next year, we plan to put the spotlight on key issues like making the most out of virtualisation, maintaining the health of your network without investing in infrastructure etc.

Comprehensive Security solution - multiple security functions on the one appliance.

Companies are balancing the need for increasing protection from malicious threats, reliability and functionality with decreasing costs. Unified threat management (UTM) that counters blended threats and offers zero day protection together with a competitive price tag, is an emerging trend in the network security market. Frost and Sullivan have predicted that the worldwide UTM market would increase at a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent to $6.9 billion in 2014. UTM appliances have evolved from traditional firewall/VPN products into a solution with many additional capabilities, including:

* Spam blocking
* Gateway antivirus
* Spyware prevention
* Intrusion prevention
* URL filtering

Many solutions on the market claim to offer all-in-one approaches with more comprehensive protection, easier management and better return on investment than standalone security applications. Deciding between them can be tricky. In order to help you decide, we feature a report by an independent third party labs group.

Miercom's independent review of four prominent security appliances puts the WatchGuard solution in the lead. The review says:"Comprehensive security provision is asking a lot of one box, especially at enterprise-level demand. Three of the four tested units failed to block many of the security threats delivered by the three security effectiveness test systems. The WatchGuard Firebox Peak X 8500e was the exception and performed well on all security effectiveness tests."

Evaluate a WatchGuard UTM appliance at no cost

As WatchGuard's Partner of the Year two years running, Netforce offers a free trial of a WatchGuard UTM firewall for 30 days. A trial appliance along with our networking expertise, help on installation and security policies is available to you to test over the quiet January period.

Fill in the form below to take advantage of this offer or please read on to find out about our second featured technology, business grade VoIP from Netforce.