If you run a small business, a network firewall is the best way to protect your network without having to manually configure a software firewall on each PC. With the Safe@Office 225, Check Point is moving into the small business market.

This appliance has a wealth of features. First, it's a four-port Ethernet switch and has two Wan (wide area network) ports. The second port can be connected to a secondary ISP and used as a failover, or configured as a Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) for protecting Internet-facing servers.

Once connected to a network, the Safe@Office automatically dishes out IP addresses via its DHCP server. The appliance is then configured by the friendly web interface. The DHCP server is a little tricky to configure and requires knowledge of how IP subnet masks work, and we think this could have been made easier.

The rest of the product is a lot easier to use. The standard settings just involve moving a slider to pick a low, medium or high security setting. These automatically configure the firewall to block certain types of traffic, which the excellent manual describes in detail.

This will appeal to novice users, but experts will appreciate a full rules engine to manually configure the firewall, which uses Check Point's proven stateful inspection firewall engine.

The Safe@Office 225 also has VPN capability that supports up to 10 concurrent users, which is useful for providing secure connections to your network from remote users.

Finally, there's a choice of subscription services to choose from, including web filtering, email anti-virus scanning and automatic updates. Check Point provides this appliance in a range of models to suit different sized business or home networks.

Contact: Check Point 01223 713600
www.checkpoint.com

Specifications:

• Four-port switch
• Two Wan ports
• 80Mbits/sec firewall
• 8,000 connections/second firewall
• 20Mbits/sec VPN
• Web-based management