RATING BREAKDOWN
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QUICK READ
- Strengths: Excellent UTM features at a reasonable price.
- Weaknesses: Designed for small environments of 10 users or less.
- Verdict: Great choice for smaller environments. This has been a ZyXEL hallmark for some time, and this product doesn’t disappoint.
The ZyWALL USG50 from ZyXEL offers a lot of solid UTM functionality in a small device. This little appliance includes a firewall, intrusion prevention system, web content filtering using Blue Coat, anti-virus engines from both ZyXEL and Kaspersky Lab, and application control to regulate and control use of instant messengers and peer-to-peer applications.
We found this product to be quite easy to set up and configure. The initial setup of the appliance is guided by a short wizard, which helps set up the appliance interfaces and network configuration. After the completion of the wizard, all further management and configuration is done through the web-based interface. We found this to be a little confusing at first, but we quickly became familiar with the layout and had very little trouble navigating around the interface after a few minutes.
One thing we really liked about the interface was the fully customizable dashboard. The dashboard allows for the addition of several different widgets - such as visuals on the top five intrusions or viruses. This customizable dashboard provides an excellent way to get a quick look at many pieces of system and network information without having to create reports or search around various monitoring screens.
Documentation included with the tool was comprised of quick-start and full user guides. The quick-start guide provided a few short steps that made it easy to connect the appliance to the network and access the setup wizard.
ZyXEL offers no-cost, eight-hours-a-day/five-days-a-week phone and email technical support for customers. Also available is a large online support area and library with knowledge base, many documents and downloads and product documentation.
At a price of just $630 - including one-year licenses for intrusion detection and prevention, anti-virus and content filtering services - this product is an excellent value for the money for smaller environments looking for an affordable UTM with some good features.
