According to the firm – which is offering a trial version of the firewall management system software from its website – for the first time, the enterprise-level features and performance of Skybox' previous applications are available in a package specifically designed for mid-size enterprises.

In use, CertiFire is billed as automatically collecting and analysing firewall settings, as well as configuration data, to find potential security and compliance risks in minutes, rather than the hours or days taken using conventional methodologies.

The company claims that CertiFire addresses the need for mid-size enterprises to keep multiple firewalls secure and in compliance with policies – especially given the challenges of ensuring network availability and compliance with limited IT budgets and resources.

In use, the software is said to automate the most time-consuming firewall management tasks, providing accurate, complete, and action-oriented firewall information in a short timeframe.

Scott Crawford, managing research director with Enterprise Management Associates, a market research firm, said that managing complex firewall deployments is not just a problem for large enterprises. It is, he explained, an enterprise-class headache felt by mid-sized organisations as well.

"The challenge in this market is delivering realistic solutions appropriate to the need that also deliver a sufficiently comprehensive feature set", he said. "With the entrance of Skybox Security into the mid-market, many more companies can now take advantage of its firewall management capabilities through a simple to use, downloadable product that was designed for the needs of this class of organisation", he added.