UTM is the need of the hour

The latest report by Aberdeen states that Unified Threat Management (UTM)
will continue to grow as the best-in-class organizations are adopting UTM.

The highlights of the report states that on average, more than 120 new
vulnerability disclosures are made every week (nearly 90 percent of which could
be exploited remotely), and more than 4,00,000 new examples of malware were
identified in the last year.

It also states that many organizations are adopting UTM. In the study named
'Unified Threat Management: What's In, What's Next, and Why,' organizations (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, ie adopt a UTM strategy.

The study also revealed that costs and complexity are top UTM drivers -across
all respondents, reducing cost and reducing complexity.

UTM gains quantified-best-in-class companies using approach realized the
following gains in the last 12 months over those with lagging performance:

• 20 percent reduction in actual threat/vulnerability related incidents.
• 14 percent reduction in audit deficiencies.
• 11 percent reduction in unscheduled downtime.
• 5 percent reduction in total associated staff.

Compared to Laggards, top organizations 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.

"Businesses are turning to UTM devices because of their capabilities to
address multiple threats, as well as for the tangible benefits of reducing costs
and improving efficiencies," said Derek E Brink, VP and Research Fellow-IT
Security, Aberdeen. "As UTM appliances continue to add new features to mitigate
future threats, and increase functionality and management capabilities, we
expect to see even more businesses utilize best-in-class security practices with
UTM appliances," he added.