Unified Threat Management (UTM) started as the integration of security functions, such as inspection firewalling, antivirus, intrusion prevention & detection. This CXO Today report suggests that this
integration in firewalls now has developed into completely virtualized firewalls.
“Apart from UTM firewall functions, static and dynamic routing can also be virtualized. To communicate between multiple virtual firewalls, Fortinet allows the activation of Inter-VDOM routing. This involves packets being routed internally between the virtual firewalls making communication via physical network interfaces redundant. This results in savings in terms of physical network interfaces and increased performance. Physical network interfaces can be virtualized via Virtual LANs (VLANs). Under the right conditions, up to 4000 virtual VLAN interfaces can be used simultaneously.”
