By Simon Quicke

3 December 2008

Firewalls have become the latest technology area to get a web 2.0 refresh and resellers are being urged to think differently about how to sell technology to customers in a market that is driven so strongly by the Internet.

That has been a constant theme over the last couple of years from Barrie Desmond, business development director at VADition, but the distributor has strengthened its security portfolio with a firewall product that differs from the norm.

“We have set out to be a web 2.0 distribution business and we have looked at the traffic coming across the web and how you can maintain the integrity of the network,” he said.

For the most part firewalls control the traffic going over a couple of ports, including port 80, but in a situation where the challenge is to monitor the application and the individual most of the current installed products fail to provide that level of protection.

Karl Driesen, EMEA vice president of sales at Palo Alto, said that it was trying to adapt firewall technology to the changing landscape.

“In the past it was all about port numbers and packets but that doesn’t tell you anything these days,” he said.

He added that it was encouraging customers to set different expectations of what to expect with a firewall and the upgrade and refresh potential with both standalone and UTM devices was one that should interest resellers.

Driesen added that because it could recognise users by the active directory it could define individual security policies and save money and time for those customers using a firewall that blocked everything or had numerous products trying to filter down to the individual level.