Untangle: Network Security for SMB

Network security plays a huge role for businesses today. The integrity and usability of the network are pivotal to a business's operations. While big companies rely on their IT departments for their network security, small and medium businesses with minimal budgets often do not have the luxury of affording an IT department. Hence, they end up being soft targets on the cyber landscape. Untangle, a company based out of San Jose, California helps such small companies set up a security infrastructure so that their business remains secure.

Founded in 2003, Untangle is an award-winning network security solutions company which is trusted by thousands of customers around the world. The company engages with a wide range of small and medium-sized businesses and helps them establish their network security. Since its inception, the company has helped many organizations. Untangle has worked with companies with as few as two employees on its payroll to companies with thousands of devices on their network.

Firewall for small and medium businesses

Untangle comes with the most versatile Firewall in the market. The Firewall by the company has done wonders, specifically, for school environments. Its innovations in cybersecurity products for the below-enterprise market have protected many nonprofits, schools, home offices, and governmental organizations.

Most enterprises in the space get a scaled-down version of the security products to bring down the prices for the smaller businesses availing them. But this is where Untangle differentiates itself from others. The company specifically focuses on smaller and medium businesses. Hence, their security solutions are much more appropriate and cater to the requirements of these companies. They provide all the tools that can connect these businesses to the internet safely.

Best for a network

A company gains another dimension when its branches are dispersed across a landscape. This complicates the security scenario. Untangle has the expertise to bring all these offices together by building a secure network. The company has been able to apply different types of policies that are required for various offices of a company. For example, an administrative office may need to operate on a separate set of security policies than the storefront environments. Untangle specializes in such scenarios.

Flexibility

The company has certain ease associated to it as you can download its software and you can choose to install it on your own server or you can go for an appliance which comes with pre-installed software to reduce the hassle. Its versatility comes through as it can be installed in virtual machines or cloud environments too!

Untangle’s simple approach to the complex issue of network security has resonated with many businesses. As a result, the company has had the chance of serving over 40,000 customers to date.

Meet the CEO

Scott Devens, CEO of Untangle

Mr. Devens brings an experience of more than 25 years of executive leadership from security, data integration/ middleware and storage industries.  He has held various senior executive roles with Core Security, IONA Technologies, Courion, and Data General/EMC. He also serves on the board of Building Conversation, an early stage Boston-based augmented reality company.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Bryant University and a Master’s in Business Administration from Nichols College.

Case Study: Rathbone Group

Rathbone Group LLC is a national legal firm headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. The law firm serves its clients throughout all stages of the subrogation claim process. The company represents insurance carriers, self-insured entities, and third-party administrators, with offices serving the U.S., Canada, and the U.S. islands.

But when it started back in 2014, the company was supporting 50 employees and had to be savvy with their budget for network security. Jeffery Kaput, the Director of IT, had previously used Untangle for a long time. Hence, Untangle’s NG Firewall solution was implemented at Rathbone. The Firewall provided the legal group with a layer-7 application, filtering, allowing complete visibility into everything happening on the network. The company uses the entire suite of applications in NG Firewall Complete.

“Since the software is already installed, all I had to do was push policies via Command Center, and we were up and running.” – Jeffery Kaput, Rathbone Group.

With various field offices dispersed across the nation, Rathbone needed to manage the network too. So, Kaput utilized Untangle’s u25x appliances which are ideal for branch offices to stay on top of network issues. The network security package was complete for Rathbone when the Untangle Dashboard and the Reports app was utilized by them to get insights on the office’s network and produce necessary audit reports for their clients.

Rathbone has been using Untangle for over four years now. It further plans to implement WAN Failover and WAN Balancer apps so that the internet is always accessible.

“Our company was founded to help organizations with limited budgets and IT resources untangle the complexity of connecting to the internet safely.”

“Today, Untangle’s leadership remains committed to that vision of bringing powerful network security to small-to-medium business.”