With many new and improved products on the market, this has been a good year for designing VPNs and deploying firewalls. Here's an overview of happenings during 2002 with exclusive comments from David Flynn, Vice President of Marketing at NetScreen Technologies.

When asked about the development of the global VPN and firewall security market in 2002, Flynn said: "Because of the increasing number, complexity and origin of threats, the perimeter firewall security approach is inadequate. Security must be ubiquitous to the network - guarding both the ever-expanding perimeter and the vulnerable interior of an organization. Enterprises and service providers are recognizing that legacy security solutions are too complex to deploy and maintain, and often produce "choke points" in the network, making ubiquitous deployment unwieldy."

"Customers are increasingly turning to purpose-built integrated security appliances, such as NetScreen's devices, that have exceptional performance, robust functionality and simple deployment and management features to secure their networks without compromise." Flynn added.

In every aspect of security there's been events that marked the year, when it comes to VPN and firewall security Flynn said: "2002 has been the year of marked VPN adoption. As distributed enterprises and service providers recognize the cost savings realized by leveraging the public Internet versus leased lines for data connections, deployments have increased from tens to hundreds of sites."


What would a year review be without defining expectations and trends for the future? Flynn said: "Customers will be looking to replace legacy networks and security solutions with solutions that enable new applications and help increase overall security and efficiency, while still saving money. To this end, NetScreen anticipates continued adoption of appliances and increased integration of functionality, such as intrusion detection, in those systems."

"Specifically, from NetScreen in the coming year, customers can expect to see integration of intrusion detection and prevention technology into firewalls so that a single platform can be leveraged to help improve security and reduce operating costs, without jeopardizing performance." Flynn added.

Here are some interesting activities in the VPN and firewall market in 2002: