Author Topic: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall  (Read 10091 times)

0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Spyros

  • Guest
Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« on: December 02, 2005, 10:10:34 AM »
Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall

Best of breed firewall will become part of company's desktop security product line

Clearwater, Florida, USA — December 1, 2005 — Sunbelt Software and Kerio Technologies, Inc. today announced that the parties have signed an agreement for Sunbelt to acquire the Kerio Personal Firewall. The acquisition is expected to be finalized by the end of the month. Terms of the deal are undisclosed.

The Kerio Personal Firewall will be re-branded on an interim basis as the "Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall". All existing customers of the Kerio Personal Firewall will be able to receive support through Sunbelt once the acquisition is completed.

Upon the close of the deal, Sunbelt will also announce new reduced pricing for the full version of the product and a variety of special offers for both Kerio and Sunbelt customers. Additionally, Sunbelt will continue Kerio's tradition of providing a basic free version for home users.

"The popular Kerio firewall is a clear technology leader in endpoint security for businesses and consumers," said Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt Software. "We are thrilled to have it as part of our product line and Kerio users should know that we are firmly committed to continuing to provide world-class support for the product."

"We feel that Sunbelt is uniquely positioned to offer both best in class support and ongoing product development for Kerio Personal Firewall and its legion of loyal users," said Martin Viktora, CEO and CTO of Kerio Technologies, Inc. "We are pleased that this product has found such a deserving home."

The deal is expected to close before the end of the year. During the transition period, Kerio will continue to support the product and users are encouraged to download the Kerio Personal Firewall from the Kerio website at www.kerio.com until the acquisition is completed. After the transition, all existing Kerio Personal Firewall resellers will be invited to become Sunbelt reseller partners to continue to sell the product.

As Kerio transitions from the desktop security market, the company will focus its energies on the development of its two leading SMB products - Kerio MailServer and Kerio WinRoute Firewall. For more information, please visit http://www.kerio.com.

About the Kerio Personal Firewall
The Kerio Personal Firewall is a powerful and industry-leading firewall that provides both firewall protection as well as host-based intrusion prevention (HIPS) and content filtering. The product was introduced in 2002 with over 2,000,000 downloads worldwide. In a recent 4-star review, PC Magazine said "Kerio Personal Firewall 4 was the best in this roundup. Its users can choose moderate program control with no pop-ups, or unusually powerful protection after an initial spate of pop-ups".

About Kerio Technologies Inc.
Innovating in Internet security since 1997, Kerio Technologies Inc. (www.kerio.com) provides Internet messaging and firewall software solutions for small to medium sized networks, emphasizing the secure delivery of network data. Kerio's corporate headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California, with offices in Great Britain and the Czech Republic. Kerio's technology partners include McAfee, Inc. and Internet Security Systems. Kerio MailServer, Kerio WinRoute Firewall and Kerio Personal Firewall can all be purchased globally using the Internet and a network of more than 200 resellers.

About Sunbelt Software
Headquartered in Tampa Bay (Clearwater), Fla., Sunbelt Software was founded in 1994 and offers product solutions to protect and secure systems from costly inefficiencies such as spam and spyware.

Sunbelt Software is part of the Sunbelt International Group, which includes Sunbelt Software and Sunbelt System Software in Europe. The Sunbelt System Software group has offices in the UK, France, Belgium, Sweden and Germany.

Source: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Press.cfm?id=134

kakapo

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2005, 12:26:12 PM »
That's Good.... No! That's GREAT  News Spyros!
It'd been rumoured that Kerio was too good to simply pass away,  ;)  and this confirms it. Best news I've had today anyway! Cheers!
Just LOVE that li'l' firewall..........


Offline DavidR

  • Avast Überevangelist
  • Certainly Bot
  • *****
  • Posts: 88895
  • No support PMs thanks
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2005, 04:45:41 PM »
A lot depends on Sunbelt's plans for Kerio, but it looks promising that they state they will continue with the free to home users usage.

Will they try and incorporate their CounterSpy anti-spyware product (one of the best anti-spyware products) into the firewall like Outpost Pro has since the AdaWare (Lavasoft) and Agnitum technical co-operation agreement. I have terminated the anti-spyware plug-in in outpost, but the sodding thing keeps trying to update the spyware database when I look for just program updated.

I hope they don't decide to go the bloatware route and let a firewall do what it does best block uninvited intrusions and uninitiated outbound internet connections. There are already too many Security Suites that are Jacks of All Trades but Master of None out there.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security

Offline szc

  • Avast Evangelist
  • Starting Graphoman
  • ***
  • Posts: 6927
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2005, 07:24:00 PM »
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17744.msg151459#msg151459

And I was right... again  ;)... Kerio will not die, I kept saying that here in forums:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=17744.msg151469#msg151469 (reply I made right after Jarmo's)
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H Intel 7 Series  - LGA1155, CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K - Quad Core, 3.40GHz (3.80GHz Max Turbo), CPU COOLER: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Direct Heat Pipe R2, RAM: 16 GB Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3, VIDEO CARD: Galaxy GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 1GB, GDDR5, POWER SUPPLY: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 - 750 Watts, HD: Seagate Barracuda - 2TB, 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gb/s

Jarmo P

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2005, 08:09:44 PM »
Quote
A lot depends on Sunbelt's plans for Kerio, but it looks promising that they state they will continue with the free to home users usage.

Very much so :)

Quote
I hope they don't decide to go the bloatware route and let a firewall do what it does best block uninvited intrusions and uninitiated outbound internet connections. There are already too many Security Suites that are Jacks of All Trades but Master of None out there.

Even if they do, I feel better that people now at least can trust KPF 4.2.2 and not start talking about moving to other firewalls. They always do when a product is stopped.
Symanted killed Sygate. SPF had some issues with Avast's proxies. Lost outbound control, though they still got logged. Nothing serious in my mind. It was a really good firewall when not running proxies, light too. I have kept my copies.

Now I am running Kerio and in no ways feeling like a deserter since Symantec killed also the forum support.

No other free firewalls came in my mind as close as these 2 in configurability. Mature products with no baby troubles. So this is good news about Kerio so far :)

AvastForever

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #5 on: December 04, 2005, 02:38:22 AM »
So they will continue to have product updates for kerio FW?

Offline Lisandro

  • Avast team
  • Certainly Bot
  • *
  • Posts: 67195
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #6 on: December 04, 2005, 03:10:12 AM »
So they will continue to have product updates for kerio FW?
I hope so... They won't buy the firewall and keep it without updates...
Hope they don't mess it all. It was a good firewall (except the GUI, in my opinion).
The best things in life are free.

Offline szc

  • Avast Evangelist
  • Starting Graphoman
  • ***
  • Posts: 6927
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2005, 03:53:41 AM »
Exactly, same thought as Tech's I am sharing as well... it will be called Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall... in my opinion totaly stupid and unnecessary... name will be too long. If they want to built it from the scratch, and I'm sure they will have to work on it since there is more problems than just unbelievable buggy GUI, they should think of some better and above all shorter name, even though that's not that important.

I am happy Kerio user and I will keep using it. I just hope they will improve it eventually and fix all those problems.

Of course updates will be available, that's only logical thinking.
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H Intel 7 Series  - LGA1155, CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K - Quad Core, 3.40GHz (3.80GHz Max Turbo), CPU COOLER: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Direct Heat Pipe R2, RAM: 16 GB Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3, VIDEO CARD: Galaxy GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 1GB, GDDR5, POWER SUPPLY: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 - 750 Watts, HD: Seagate Barracuda - 2TB, 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gb/s

Offline YLAP

  • Avast Evangelist
  • Super Poster
  • ***
  • Posts: 2118
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #8 on: December 04, 2005, 07:35:22 AM »
Nice to know all these things, as I was was testing new ZA Pro for some time, but I'm back to Kerio for some reasons. One of them is that my computer programs which checks for internet connection does not understand I'm not connected when I'm using ZA Pro (free works without this bug  :-\) and sometimes it tooks really long to start them. Solution - engage internet lock for all internet connections or to shut down router. With Kerio I never had this problem. So I hope that Kerio will "live" long long live.  ;D

Jarmo P

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #9 on: December 04, 2005, 07:03:11 PM »
I have now no problems with Kerio's latest. It is true a memory hog compared to Kerio 2.1.5. 25 MB instead of 6 MB.

Still it has most easy and flexible configurability. Not though easy to explain so much memory usage since only really new feature is "application blocking behaviour". It is a good one, I like that. I need to get asked the first time IE gets out. Not just allowing it without ask in packet filter rule.

Well, acting as an application control firewall too and those HIPS, even if they are disabled and gone now, must take some toll in memory usage and others. It is much, but stable, never rises much above that 25 MB :)

I am not familiar with earlier versions of Kerio 4. It was always put down in broadbandreports forum, like the latest post there about sunbelt acquisition thread:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14925406

Firewalls like kpf 2.1.5 and Sygate are light, but todays standards I can bare up with that 25 MB. Considering how much Ewido antitrojan consumed, when I had it on 14 day trial. It took more than Avast, being just a real time scanner with no thrills.

Edit: I can still remember how my Sinclair ZX Spectrum had a 48 K memory with no hard disk ;)
« Last Edit: December 04, 2005, 07:22:46 PM by Jarmo P »

AvastForever

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2005, 02:39:47 AM »
well i will hope that they will get updates on it. Then maybe i will think about getting it.

One question: Kerio Personal FW the Free edition is like ZA Free or Kerio Free Edition have stuff that is not found in ZA Free?

And when can i go to download Sunbelt Kerio personal FW?
« Last Edit: December 05, 2005, 02:43:41 AM by AvastForever »

kakapo

  • Guest

Offline szc

  • Avast Evangelist
  • Starting Graphoman
  • ***
  • Posts: 6927
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #12 on: December 05, 2005, 02:50:12 PM »
And here is a comparison table (Kerio Free and Pro):

http://www.kerio.com/kpf_comparison_version.html

Sunbelt announced few things in their blog here:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/we-liked-product-so-much-we-bought-it.html

What makes me so happy is they promissed they will continue to provide Kerio Freeware edition... see here:

Highlights:

Quote
The acquisition is expected to be finalized by the end of this month.   
The Kerio Personal Firewall will be re-branded on an interim basis as the “Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall”. 
All existing customers of the Kerio Personal Firewall will be able to receive support through Sunbelt once the acquisition is completed. 
Upon the close of the deal, Sunbelt will also announce new reduced pricing for the full version of the product and a variety of special offers for both Kerio and Sunbelt customers. 
Additionally, Sunbelt will continue Kerio’s tradition of providing a basic free version for home users.
During the transition period, Kerio will continue to support the product and users are encouraged to download the Kerio Personal Firewall from the Kerio website at www.kerio.com until the acquisition is completed.
MB: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H Intel 7 Series  - LGA1155, CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K - Quad Core, 3.40GHz (3.80GHz Max Turbo), CPU COOLER: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO Direct Heat Pipe R2, RAM: 16 GB Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3, VIDEO CARD: Galaxy GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 1GB, GDDR5, POWER SUPPLY: Corsair Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 - 750 Watts, HD: Seagate Barracuda - 2TB, 7200RPM, 64MB, SATA 6Gb/s

AvastForever

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #13 on: December 06, 2005, 04:20:13 AM »
And here is a comparison table (Kerio Free and Pro):

http://www.kerio.com/kpf_comparison_version.html

Sunbelt announced few things in their blog here:

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/we-liked-product-so-much-we-bought-it.html

What makes me so happy is they promissed they will continue to provide Kerio Freeware edition... see here:

Highlights:

Quote
The acquisition is expected to be finalized by the end of this month.   
The Kerio Personal Firewall will be re-branded on an interim basis as the “Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall”. 
All existing customers of the Kerio Personal Firewall will be able to receive support through Sunbelt once the acquisition is completed. 
Upon the close of the deal, Sunbelt will also announce new reduced pricing for the full version of the product and a variety of special offers for both Kerio and Sunbelt customers. 
Additionally, Sunbelt will continue Kerio’s tradition of providing a basic free version for home users.
During the transition period, Kerio will continue to support the product and users are encouraged to download the Kerio Personal Firewall from the Kerio website at www.kerio.com until the acquisition is completed.

I heard that Kerio has Intrusion Detection, does that confilct with Avast! Network Shield?

Also Kerio has the feature that Process Guard right? That kerio will ask you if you want any app to run or not with you click it.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2005, 04:25:36 AM by AvastForever »

MFB

  • Guest
Re: Sunbelt Software to acquire Kerio Personal Firewall
« Reply #14 on: December 06, 2005, 04:46:27 AM »



I heard that Kerio has Intrusion Detection, does that confilct with Avast! Network Shield?


Never had any problems when I was using Kerio.   

Quote
Also Kerio has the feature that Process Guard right? That kerio will ask you if you want any app to run or not with you click it.

Not that I know of.