The ZyWALL USG300 brings together core UTM functionality with a couple of extra features. This product includes standard features, such as firewall, IPS and gateway virus protection, but also has a web content filter and IM and P2P control and blocking. The gateway anti-virus engine scans critical protocols, such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4.
We found this product to be fairly difficult to configure. Configuration is guided by a setup wizard, but it only goes so far. Once the wizard is complete we still had to do some tweaking to the firewall, DNS and zone settings to get everything running properly. On the policy configuration side, things were quite easy to setup and most of the policy was preconfigured and ready to go. Many of the policy tweaks that we did were a simple check in a box and that was it. We also found the web-based GUI to be well organized and easy to navigate.
This product did quite well throughout our tests. The IPS and firewall worked great together to block all our attacks and we even tested the P2P blocking with good results. This product can also integrate with Active Directory making policy distribution easy as well.
Documentation for this product includes a quick start guide, user guide and a couple of reference cards for the command line interface and configuration. The quick start guide briefly defines the appliance ports and interfaces and illustrates the initial configuration with the setup wizard.
ZyXEL offers free domestic technical support and free firmware upgrades for as long as the product line is supported. Phone and email support is available 8/5 and the website contains a support area with downloads and a knowledge base.
At $1,900, this product is a great value for the money for small- to medium-sized environments that want solid comprehensive protection at a good price.
