Although Small Businesses might be "small" by definition, they still have the same network security needs as larger Enterprise businesses.  However, until now there really haven't been any Unified Threat Management (or UTM) solutions sized for Small Businesses.

Unified Threat Management is far more than just a basic firewall, router, or internet access gateway that you would purchase at a big-box technology store.  It's an all-encompassing appliance that includes one or many of the following features:

- Firewalling
- Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS)
- Network Intrusion Prevention System (NIPS)
- Anti-Spam
- Web Anti-Virus
- Content Filtering
- Load balancing

Why are some or all of these features important for Small Business?  Simply put, they ensure that inward internet threats (from the internet, to your network) are reported on, or blocked.  They also ensure that your users are only surfing sites they're allowed to visit based on your own acceptable use policy, and the sites and e-mails that they do connect with are free of malware and viruses.

All of this is important to prevent everything from information theft to system downtime due to viruses and malware.

The cost of productivity loss is often orders of magnitude higher than the cost of a UTM appliance, which is why more and more small businesses are looking for these types of solutions but simply don't know where to look.

WW Works has been offering an in-house developed solution called ProtectionWorks as part of our ServiceWorks package for the last 3 years.  This solution combines best-of-breed cloud-based web and e-mail filtering, along with our own firewall, NIDS/NIPS, and load-balancing appliance that is completed managed and monitored 24x7 to fully protect small businesses, their information and users.

ProtectionWorks is continually evolving and being improved.  Partners that are currently using ServiceWorks are given bleeding edge protection often well before other competitive solutions!

My job has been to investigate emerging options, evaluate them, and decide if they become part of our ProtectionWorks and ServiceWorks offering.  Over the past few months, the change has been rapid as we prepare to release version 2.0 of our UTM appliance.  This version includes high-speed enhanced Intrusion Detection and Prevention, additional data capture for reporting, as well as several other enhancements and additions designed for better visibility and control of our partner networks.

We're excited to be able to offer unique Enterprise-level protection to our SMB partners.