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SEATTLE – May 18, 2012. WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader in business security solutions, today announced that its Q1 billings have once again returned double digit, year over year growth.

"The first quarter of 2012 was a record first quarter for WatchGuard, following up on a record year in 2011," said Richard Barber, CFO at WatchGuard Technologies. "Hackers continue to push the security envelope, which means businesses are constantly hardening their networks, applications and data. Additionally, regulatory pressures around the globe continue to push businesses to take stronger positions against data loss, all of which bodes well for WatchGuard and our channel partners."

In particular, the company notes five consecutive quarters of double-digit growth (averaging 15 percent) from the company's core UTM business, extremely high customer retention rates, and 39 percent year over year billings growth for its enterprise class, next-generation multifunction firewalls, which includes the XTM 8 series, XTM 1050 and state of the art, XTM 2050.

Enterprise Performance for Any Sized Business

The WatchGuard XTM 8 Series, XTM 1050 and XTM 2050 set the standard for high performance network security. Unlike other next-generation firewalls that only perform limited firewall, IPS and application controls, WatchGuard next-generation firewalls provide "defense-in-depth" firewalling, which includes stateful packet inspection, deep packet inspection and WatchGuard's proprietary proxy technology, as well as seven additional security service options, which include: Application Control, WebBlocker, Gateway Antivirus, Reputation Enabled Defense, spamBlocker, Intrusion Prevention and LiveSecurity.

The award-winning WatchGuard XTM 8 Series delivers 6.5Gbps firewall throughput, 2.3Gbps gateway AV throughput, and industry leading 2.6Gbps IPS throughput, making it ideal for demanding networks of 1,000 or more users. With full UTM security features activated, the XTM 8 Series achieves a faster-than-line-speed 1.4Gbps throughput, which represents a major leap forward for multifunction firewall appliances in delivering high security without compromising network performance.

WatchGuard's flagship lines, the XTM 1050 and XTM 2050, are respectively 10 and 20Gbps next-generation firewalls. They provide true line-speed security inspection on all traffic and support multi-gigabit packet-filtering throughput. In addition, they provide Application Control; unique drag-and-drop VPN connectivity; and give businesses unparalleled visibility into real-time and historical user, network, and security activities.

With WatchGuard XTM solutions, businesses can define, enforce, and audit strong security and acceptable use policies, resulting in increased employee productivity and less risk to critical intellectual property or customer data.

All of the WatchGuard XTM Series take advantage of the highly sophisticated WatchGuard operating system, Fireware XTM, which defends networks by utilizing innovative security features, including WatchGuard's cloud-based Reputation Enabled Defense security service, Application Control, full HTTPS inspection, VoIP security, and IM and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) application blocking. With Fireware XTM, the WatchGuard XTM Series integrates advanced networking capabilities, including clustering, load-balancing and other enterprise-class networking features.

WatchGuard XTM Series solutions are available worldwide from authorized WatchGuard channel partners.

Barber concludes, "WatchGuard continues its pattern of significant growth. Because of our strong channel partners, solid product offerings and unbeatable customer value, 2012 appears to be on pace for another record-breaking year."