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692 Review
60 Karma

Review on πŸ”’ Zyxel USG Flex 100 (USG40 v2) UTM Firewall Bundle + 1 Year Security License - Ideal for up to 25 Users [USGFLEX100BUN] by John Young

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Health & Safety - Some

This is a professional offering that is different from many consumer offerings. SMBs need something more than just the right thing for their employees' home networks, and Zyxel could be the candidate for them. INTRODUCTION With consumer hardware priced below $250, the quality and quantity of cyber defense software and hardware has plummeted. It seems that many vendors have chosen to sell Fortune 500 products at the highest possible price and have given little thought to the SMB market, let alone the individual market. Zyxel is at least a credible offer for the middle class. With a rugged metal body that reminds me of MIDI gear from the 80's, the Zyxel F100 has a rugged look that sacrifices style. It is no problem for me. I have a home environment based entirely on Windows 10 (Windows Defender Land) except for a growing number of IoT devices. I wanted to see how this firewall can help with that. It really helps, although if you're aware of the threats, many of them can be blocked at the router level. Acquiring this knowledge is a challenge, and this is where this small business subscription service can come in handy. first year CONS – Embarrassment when moving to cloud offerings (improvements are in development) – May not work as a multi-vendor cloud-based SMB dashboard or platform – SMB owners/managers will still be confused about demonstrating your companies can meet the NIST 800-53 standard. They will also be confused as to whether they need additional hardware from Zyxel to make everything work for them. See "Nebula features in combination with Flex 100". A CSR representative noted that "we will be improving this [registration] part with a new mode name "Native Mode” for easier installation that is similar to (Device WAN Setup). IP via the device's web GUI) to register the Nebula Security Gateway (NSG) with the NCC. It will be released in October 2021. Regarding the registration trial period, see our forum post for instructions on how to enable the one-month trial period when creating a new organization. Search for "Nebula create Organization and site" on the Zyxel community pages. A little too complicated. Other Resources - Threat Information Page with Glossary - Easy guide to this technology by MBR Reviews (use web search to find "Zyxel Flex 100 has been added to Nebula Cloud Management Platform"). Small to medium sized business offering, but you may need (1) a lengthy conversation with CSR Zyxel, which in my experience may not be very quick for US businesses, or (2) a lot more reading than this reviewer took on, or ( 3) an outside expert on Zyxel's products and services I'm excited to see them on the market and I hope the products will mature into a systems approach to protection that doesn't involve cloud resources.

Pros
  • May Require Third Party Assistance Good News
Cons
  • Negative Score Present