"The Network Box 'unified threat management' technology was developed in the year 2000. The Internet suddenly made everyone part of a world-wide network they had no control over and it was clear that traditional firewalls were no longer enough. Our system was developed in direct response to the escalating need to comprehensively secure networks at the gateway, using real-time 'push' update technology," he said.

This 'push' technology is the method Network Box uses to update all of its customers world-wide with the latest virus signatures. In many ways, this technology has made it a little difficult for some people to evaluate the product properly. Some companies that specialize in evaluating security solutions have no way of evaluating a 'managed service' which is what Network Box does. They want to test the box itself but that is only half of what is done. Gazeley has sometimes had to work hard at explaining that.

Active protection

Right from the beginning, they knew that it would be crucial to get updates sent to their customers. It may have been possible 10 years ago to ask customers to log onto a website every Wednesday afternoon and download all the latest virus signatures, but that has not been true for many years (if it ever was).

"We are seeing one attack on each customer IP every five seconds around the globe. On average, our customers receive a SPAM email about once a minute, an infected email about once every five minutes, and have to cope with their own staff wasting about 47 per cent of their Internet usage, on 'none-work' related activities," he said.