ITWire

The company's ability to deliver very good technology, tools allowing hundreds of firewalls to be easily managed, realtime monitoring, excellent UTM (unified threat management) performance and new security capabilities makes WatchGuard "the value provider" and thus suited to the current economic conditions, he said.

Looking ahead, Mr Wang said the company would continue to focus on web applications and associated threats during 2012. Companies need to allow employees to access new web applications and social media sites, but they also need protection against the accompanying risks. Even though web application control was added to the firewall during 2011, 96% of companies had not implemented such technology, he said.

According to Mr Robertson, other trends for the coming year include the growing use of WatchGuard's products in virtual machines instead of the traditional appliance, the provision of secure connections between organisations and their cloud providers, and data loss prevention. "I don't think it will be too long before Australia implements tougher laws against data leakage," he said. "We're already seeing significant interest form our channel."