Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway Released as Virtual Appliances
Virtual appliances enable Astaro partners to offer security solutions in a software-as-a-service environment
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Astaro Corporation has released virtual-appliance versions of Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway. The alternative implementation model uses fewer resources and reduces administrative costs, and enables Astaro partners to offer Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway in software-as-a-service (SaaS) models by deploying the products on their own hardware and deploying a clone of the virtual machine for each customer.
Astaro is offering the products as virtual appliances to help organizations take advantage of the cost savings associated with this deployment method while continuing to protect their networks from spam, viruses, phishing and other malware.
Virtual appliances allow users to consolidate platforms and decrease the administrative costs associated with running multiple machines. Virtual appliances can be managed by one person rather than a team of administrators and require fewer servers (and thus less energy to run, lowering utility costs). Because virtual appliances are not tied to specific physical hardware, they can provide instant disaster recovery in case of an outage on one machine.
Astaro Corporation has been a certified virtual appliance partner of VMware for the past five years and has offered the Astaro Security Gateway as a virtual appliance for several years. Astaro security products run within the VMware environment and take advantage of existing hardware to allow organizations that are standardizing on virtualization to use Astaro to meet their security needs.
The Astaro Web Gateway provides integrated URL filtering, malware detection, instant messaging, and peer-to-peer application control, as well as bandwidth optimization to completely secure Web access. Other key features include HTTPS, HTTP, FTP scanning, dual antivirus engines, active directory/e-directory integration, clustering capabilities, and provides SMBs with a comprehensive solution for Web security.
The Astaro Mail Gateway combats the myriad od security risks of e-mail communication. It features high-capacity filtering with an anti-spam engine and dual virus scanners, S/MIME and PGP encryption, and message management. Users can also manage individual quarantines and black/whitelists, reducing administrator load.
More information on the Astaro Web Gateway virtual appliance is available at http://www.astaro.com/our_products/astaro_web_gateway/virtual_appliance.
Additional information about the Astaro Mail Gateway virtual appliance can be found at http://www.astaro.com/our_products/astaro_mail_gateway/virtual_appliance.