WatchGuard’s New Ruggedized Appliance Brings Simplified, Enterprise-Grade Security to Harsh Industrial Environments

I’ve been ‘watching’ WatchGuard go through many evolutions and transformations, while leading the SMB firewall market with fully loaded UTM solutions, starting with tiny little boxes that scale.  Given the fact that so many critical infrastructures – from power plants, to water distribution facilities to oil rigs are all now ‘wired’ into the Internet, we now have serious attack risk in harsher environments like these, that need better infosec gear – we welcome the new WatchGuard ruggadized appliance.

Traditional security appliances are designed for office environments, or to be mounted in a rack in a climate-controlled server room where issues with temperature, water and dust are negligible. But the growth in active Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) equipment, smart machines and connected devices in the industrial sector has created a demand for a network security platform that can withstand the harsh conditions found in these environments. Initiatives to connect and modernize industrial operations require a device that can withstand these conditions and ensure effective security while delivering consistently high performance.

Enter the Firebox T35-R from network security company WatchGuard Technologies. Announced today, this new security appliance is built specifically for harsh industrial environments like factories, manufacturing facilities, oil and gas plants or agricultural sites. This industrially hardened appliance allows midmarket businesses, distributed enterprises and the managed service providers that support them to extend WatchGuard’s industry-leading security services and performance beyond traditional office and data center settings to protect against malware, and other threats in these severe environments.

“As cyber criminals set their sights on the massive wave of newly adopted and potentially insecure IIoT devices, businesses need network security solutions that can withstand the unforgiving deployment conditions present in harsh environments,” said Brendan Patterson, VP of product management at WatchGuard. “The T35-R is designed to meet this growing demand, offering the same industry-leading, enterprise-grade performance and security protections as our conventional network security appliances, plus added resistance to issues with temperature, moisture and dust often found in manufacturing, oil and gas plants, utilities sites and agricultural environments.”

The Firebox T35-R offers a strong combination of performance, ruggedization and price compared to other offerings on the market today. As the industrial internet of things (IIoT) continues to pick up steam, security for these devices that can withstand industrial environments will be in high demand. Key features of the Firebox T35-R that make it the perfect solution for these rugged spaces include:

• An IP64-Rated Industrial Enclosure – The appliance is fully dust- and splash-proof, and capable of operating in temperatures of -40 to +60 degrees Celsius, providing reliable security and connectivity, and eliminating the need to build custom enclosures.
• DC Power – The appliance can operate on 12v to 48v DC power, or alternatively use an optional AC power supply.
• Industry-leading Network Security – The T35-R makes site-to-site VPN connectivity simple, reliable and manageable, and empowers administrators to confidently enable advanced security protections including APT Blocker, Threat Detection and Response, DNSWatch, IPS, Gateway AntiVirus, and more, without slowing network speeds. NSS Labs recently recommended WatchGuard Firebox in their annual NGFW report as one of only two vendors that successfully defeated all evasion attempts.
• Simplified Deployment – Industrial organizations and the IT solution providers that support them can easily configure, deploy and manage the T35-R using RapidDeploy, WatchGuard’s centralized zero-touch configuration solution, and the WatchGuard Cloud management platform. Users can pre-configure appliances for quick and nontechnical installation, saving travel time and man hours for individual security deployments at remote industrial sites.
• SCADA IPS Signatures – Included with WatchGuard’s Basic and Total Security Suite, the Firebox T35-R leverages these signatures to protect against known industrial control system (ICS) and SCADA threats and enable security use cases in harsh deployment environments.

The T35-R is available today through WatchGuard’s channel partner network. Full product details are available here.

Sources:  Gary S. Miliefsky, Publisher and WatchGuard.