Astaro Corporation Announces Availability of Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway as Virtual Appliances

Virtual appliances enable Astaro partners to offer security solutions in a Software as a Service environment.

May 18, 2009 (Wilmington, MA) - Astaro Corporation, a leading network security vendor, today announced the availability of the Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway as virtual appliances. This alternative implementation model consumes fewer resources and reduces administrative costs. Additionally, the virtual appliances enable Astaro partners to offer their customers the Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway in Software as a Service (SaaS) models.

Astaro is offering its Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway 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, require fewer servers and thus less energy to run, further reducing an organization’s costs and creating a greener network. Because virtual appliances are not tied to specific physical hardware they can provide instant disaster recovery in case of an outage on one machine.

In addition to the traditional benefits of implementing products in a virtual environment, the virtual appliance model enables Astaro partners to offer their customers the Astaro Web Gateway and the Astaro Mail Gateway in a SaaS environment. Partners simply deploy the products as virtual appliances on their own hardware and then deploy a clone of the virtual machine for each customer, providing them with the e-mail and web security they require. SaaS deployments offer users the same solutions as on site deployments, without the burden of managing the solution.

"We are able to get our Astaro Web Gateway and Astaro Mail Gateway customers up and running in minutes using the SaaS deployment method," said John Boudreau, Vice President, Micros Northeast. "As organizations continue to look for ways to reduce costs, being able to offer a SaaS deployment of an award winning security product is a huge competitive advantage."

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.

"Astaro consistently looks for innovative ways to benefit our partners and users. We offer our products as virtual appliances so that our users can benefit from reduced hardware expenditures and because virtual appliances are ideally suited for managed security services," said David Rogers, Vice President Americas, Astaro Corporation. "The ability to use this deployment method as a way to offer our solutions in a SaaS environment is yet another example of the how our partners and users benefit from Astaro’s security expertise."

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 security risks of email communication. It features high-capacity filtering with a patented 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.