SEATTLE – February 16, 2023 – WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader in unified cybersecurity, today announced the release of its new Firebox T25/T25-W,T45/T45-POE/T45-W-POE, and T85-POE tabletop firewall appliances. Powered by WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform® architecture to deliver comprehensive security and simplified management through WatchGuard Cloud, these new firewalls are engineered to provide the performance that remote and distributed business environments need for better protection against the latest network security threats.

With more memory and faster processing speeds for enhanced throughput,this new line of Firebox products enables WatchGuard partners, MSPs, and IT administrators to securebranch offices, office equipment, remote devices, retail point-of-sale (POS) software, and remote users from complex and emerging threats, while minimizing network configuration and management requirements.

“IT environments of all types and sizes face advanced and sophisticated threats from attackers, but SMBs and branch offices typically don’t have dedicated technical staff to configure, install and manage network security appliances,” said Ryan Poutre, product manager at WatchGuard Technologies. “This new generation of Fireboxes takes full advantage of our Unified Security Platform architecture, enabling MSPs to provide the robust solutions and simplified management they require to meet the needs of a wide range of customers and deployment scenarios.”

With enterprise-class security services likeAPT Blocker (sandbox malware detection) and ThreatSync for shared knowledge between endpoint and network, the new Fireboxesare idealfor small businesses that lack a designated security team. Beyond providing advanced malware protection for distributed environments, the new appliances include SD-WAN to optimize network performance by dynamically distributing network traffic across multiple connections based on defined policies.These new Fireboxes take advantage of the latest updates in WatchGuard Cloud to display a graphical real-time update of SD-WAN link status and any failovers, and they also support the latest Fireware capabilities for load sharing across multiple links. These capabilities are included in all of WatchGuard's service packages.

“WatchGuard’s tabletop Firebox appliances give us all the features and security protection of their bigger rackmount brothers, and make us more efficient with zero-touch provisioning to deploy and configure devices, upgrade firmware and apply policies after a remote user activates a device. We can quickly deploy and configure SD-WAN via WatchGuard Cloud from remote locations,” said Troy Midwood, chief technology officer at Aabyss. “These appliances are another example of WatchGuard’s focus on building great products that enable our MSP business.”

Key features for each of the new Firebox products include:

• WatchGuard Firebox T25/T25-W: Provides stand-alone or centrally managed protection forsmall offices, home offices, and retail environments with complete enterprise-level network security. Zero-touch deployment via WatchGuard Cloud enables quick setup at remote locations to ensure secure connections. Provides up to 403 Mbps UTM throughput (running Gateway AntiVirus, IPS, and Application Control) and five 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
• WatchGuard Firebox T45/T45-POE/T45-W-POE: Deliversstand-alone or centrally managedenterprise-level securityforsmall and midsize businesses. Boosts visibility into network activity/security events. Provides flexible management tools that enable quick setup at remote locations for secure business connections. Provides up to 557 Mbps UTM throughput and includes five 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The -POE models include one POE+ port to provide power to other devices like Wi-Fi access points.
• WatchGuard Firebox T85-POE: Delivers high-performance, enterprise-level security that evolves with network requirements. Features SD-WAN, full UTM protection at over 940 Mbps, and expansion modules for integrated fiber or 4G connectivity. Also provides users with two Power-over-Ethernet (PoE+) ports enabling power to peripheral devices.

Additional Resources:

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in unified cybersecurity. Our Unified Security Platform™ approach is uniquely designed for managed service providers to deliver world-class security that increases their business scale and velocity while also improving operational efficiency. Trusted by more than 17,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 250,000 customers, the company’s award-winning products and services span network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi. Together, they offer five critical elements of a security platform: comprehensive security, shared knowledge, clarity & control, operational alignment, and automation. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit WatchGuard.com.

For additional information, promotions and updates, follow WatchGuard on Twitter (@WatchGuard), on Facebook, or on the LinkedIn Company page. Also, visit our InfoSec blog, Secplicity, for real-time information about the latest threats and how to cope with them at www.secplicity.org.Subscribe to The 443 – Security Simplified podcast at Secplicity.org, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Driving tests can be a frightening experience, and it doesn't help that some who are taking their tests are worrying about things that ultimately aren't true.

According to the DVSA, there are certain common myths that learner drivers shouldn't buy into ahead of their tests. For example, a driver will not fail if they don't 'exaggerate' a head turn when checking a mirror.

Buying into these myths could put unnecessary pressure on learner motorists, which may in-turn lead to a more significant mistake which fails them on their test.

According to the motoring experts these are some of the driving test myths that you shouldn't be worrying about, since they aren't true:

• Driving test having pass quotas
• Learners automatically fail if they stall
• Learners automatically fail if they cross their hands when turning the steering wheel
• It’s easier for learners to pass their driving test at certain times of the day
• Learners need to exaggerate moving their head when looking at mirrors

It comes after the DVSA has launched their 'Ready to Pass?' campaign which provides guidance for learners and helps debunk myths to reduce the number who need to take more than one driving test.

DVSA’s Chief Executive, Loveday Ryder commented: "I'd urge learners to use our 'Ready to Pass?' website to make sure they’re ready – and delay their test if they’re not.

"This will help make more tests available and prevent people having to pay to re-test."

Recently, the driving theory test centres with the highest pass rates were revealed, with Scottish centres taking the first, second and third spot.

Learner drivers in Tarbert, Pitlochry and Huntly appear to have done their homework as they boast the best pass rates in the UK, with 91.7 percent, 84.6 percent and 84.2 percent respectively.

Speaking on the 'Ready to Pass?' campaign, Roads Minister, Richard Holden said: "Passing your driving test is a major milestone but thousands of pounds and tests are unfortunately lost due to people not being properly prepared before they try."

"We need to make every test count and I would urge learners to use the ‘Ready to Pass’ campaign and change their test if they aren’t ready."

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Inside the beating heart of many students and a large number of learners lies an inner cheat.  To get passing grades, every effort will be made to do the least to achieve the most. Efforts to subvert the central class examination are the stuff of legend: discreetly written notes on hands, palms and other body parts; secreted pieces of paper; messages concealed in various vessels that may be smuggled into the hall.

In the fight against such cunning devilry, vigilant invigilators have pursued such efforts with eagle eyes, attempting to ensure the integrity of the test answers.  Of late, the broader role of invigilation has become more pertinent than ever, notably in the face of artificial intelligence technologies that seek to undermine the very idea of the challenging, individually researched answer.

ChatGPT, a language processing tool powered by comprehensive, deep AI technology, offers nightmares for instructors and pedagogues in spades.  Myopic university managers will be slower to reach any coherent conclusions about this large language model (LLM), as they always are.  But given the diminishing quality of degrees and their supposed usefulness, not to mention running costs and the temptations offered by educational alternatives, this will come as a particularly unwelcome headache.

For the student and anyone with an inner desire to labour less for larger returns, it is nothing less than a dream, a magisterial shortcut.  Essays, papers, memoranda, and drafted speeches can all be crafted by this supercomputing wonder.  It has already shaken educational establishments and even made Elon Musk predict that humanity was “not far from dangerously strong AI.”

Launched on November 30, 2022 and the creative offspring of AI research company OpenAI, ChatGPT is a work in progress, open to the curious, the lazy and the opportunistic. Within the first five days of launching, it had 1 million users on the books.

It did not take long for the chatbot to do its work.  In January, the Manchester Evening News reported that a student by the name of Pieter Snepvangers had asked the bot to put together a 2,000-word essay on social policy.  Within 20 minutes, the work was done.  While not stellar, Snepvangers was informed by a lecturer that the essay could pass with a grade of 53.  In the words of the instructor, “This could be a student who has attended classes and has engaged with the course of the unit.  The content of the essay, this could be somebody that’s been in my classes.  It wasn’t the most terrible in terms of content.”

On receiving the assessment from the lecturer, Snepvangers could only marvel at what the site had achieved: “20 minutes to produce an essay which is supposed to demonstrate 12 weeks of learning.  Not bad.”

The trumpets of doomsday have been sounded.  Beverly Pell, an advisor on technology for children and a former teacher based in Irvine, California, saw few rays of hope with the arrival of the ChatGPT bot, notably on the issue of performing genuine research.  “There’s a lot of cheap knowledge out there,” she told Forbes.  “I think this could be a danger in education, and it’s not good for kids.”

Charging the barricades of such AI-driven knowledge forms tends to ignore the fundamental reality that the cheat or student assistance industry in education has been around for years.  The armies of ghost writers scattered across the globe willing to receive money for writing the papers of others have not disappeared.  The website stocked with readily minted essays has been ubiquitous.

More recently, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, online sites such as Chegg offer around the clock assistance in terms of homework, test preparation and writing support. The Photomath app, to take another striking example, has seen over 300 million downloads since coming into use in 2014.  It enables students to take a picture of their maths problems and seek answers.

Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is also less than impressed by claims that ChatGPT is somehow bomb blowing in its effects.  “In terms of underlying techniques, ChatGPT is not particularly innovative.”  It was merely “well put together” and “nicely done.”  Half a dozen startups, in addition to Google and Meta, were using “very similar technology” to OpenAI.

It is worth noting that universities, colleges and learning institutions constitute one aspect of the information cosmos that is ChatGPT.  The chatbot continues to receive queries of varying degrees of banality.  Questions range from astrology to suggest gift ideas to friends and family.

Then come those unfortunate legislators who struggle with the language of writing bills for legal passage.  “When asked to write a bill for a member for Congress that would make changes to federal student aid programs,” writesMichael Brickman of the American Enterprise Institute, “ChatGPT produced one in seconds.  When asked for Republican and Democrat amendments focused on consumer protection, it delivered a credible version that each party might conceivably offer.”

What are the options in terms of combating such usurping gremlins?  For one, its gratis status is bound to change once the research phase is concluded.  And, at least for the moment, the website has a service that occasionally overloads and impairs responses to questions users may pose.  To cope with this, OpenAI created ChatGPT Plus, a plan that enables users to access material even during those rocky fluctuations.

Another relevant response is to keep a hurry eye on the curriculum itself.  In the words of Jason Wingard, a self-professed “global thought leader”, “The key to retaining the value of a degree from our institution is ensuring your graduates have the skills to change with any market.  This means that we must tweak and adapt our curriculum at leastevery single year.”  Wingard’s skills in global thought leadership do not seem particularly attuned to how university curricula, and incompetent reformers who insist on changing them, function.

There are also more rudimentary, logistical matters one can adopt.  A return to pen and paper could be a start.  Or perhaps the typewriter.  These will be disliked and howled at by those narcotised by the screen, online solutions and finger tapping.  But the modern educator will have to face facts.  For all the remarkable power available through AI and machine related learning, we are also seeing a machine-automated form of unlearning, free of curiosity.  Some branches off the tree of knowledge are threatening to fall off.

A latest study from the Institute of English Language and Literature at Freie Universität Berlin has shown that using codified gestures as a teaching method may make it easier for children and adolescents to understand the grammar rules of a foreign language. Researcher Natasha Janzen Ulbricht has been investigating how different hand gestures can contribute to procedural learning during language lessons.

Her study focused on grammatical morphemes, the smallest unit of language that carries meaning, such as the plural {-s} and possessive {-s}. This innovative teaching method was tested in a primary school classroom. Tests carried out after the lessons showed that learners found it easier to internalize grammar rules and were able to apply these rules more readily when gestures which distinguish between grammatical morphemes were used as a learning aid.

The results of the study suggest that this teaching method should be further developed and refined. It also recommends that this approach be included in training programs for language teachers. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE in February 2023.

Approximately one third of children and adolescents in Germany attend a school where the main language spoken is not their first (or only first) language. This makes it all the more necessary that additional support is provided to help students learn the language and understand its grammar. Gestures could be a useful tool in this respect.

"We have neurocognitive data that support the idea of gestures being closely related to spoken language and evidence that gestures support memory when learning a language," explains Janzen Ulbricht. "Just as written notes can act as memory aids, gestures can provide a stable physical reference for language learners—even though speech is inherently ephemeral."

Words and sentences rely on units of meaning and grammatical elements, known as "morphemes." Janzen Ulbricht says that one of the challenges in acquiring languages in school lies in correctly arranging these units and being able to "predict" the next element in a given context. Codified gestures could help young learners of English who struggle with grammatical morphemes, such as the plural {-s} and possessive {-s} understand what they hear and Strengthen the predictions they make.

"Gestures offer a means of visually differentiating between grammatical morphemes that differ in meaning but sound the same," says Janzen Ulbricht. Since instructional gestures can be used independently of any given first language, teaching gestures may be particularly useful when teaching multilingual students.

Natasha Janzen Ulbricht is a researcher in English didactics and applied linguistics at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research explores how communicative movements can be used as a teaching tool in the classroom. She is also a specialist in training English language instructors and has hands-on experience in educating teachers in Germany, Zambia, and the US.

A learner driver who failed to display 'L' plates on her car has been fined after being caught speeding.

Tirtza Sternberg, of Cotswold Road, Westcliff, was driving on the A127 in Basildon on May 25 when she was caught speeding at 57mph, 7mph over the limit.

It was also found the 39-year-old was driving with a provisional licence and no 'L' plates displayed on the Toyota car.

The offences were proven in her absence at Basildon Magistrates' Court and on February 1 Sternberg was handed a £219 fine and 6-month driving ban.

She must also pay a surcharge to fund victim services of £43 and costs of £90 and her driving record has been endorsed with four points.

A learner driver, who was set to take their test in May, was arrested after being caught high on cannabis.

Officers carried out a roadside test on Garstang Road, Preston last night (Saturday, February 11) on the learner who was being supervised by a qualified driver.

The learner driver failed the test for cannabis and was arrested as a result. People on Facebook responded to Preston Police’s Facebook post praising the officers for catching the ‘idiot’.

One wrote: “I couldn’t give two hoots why they stopped the car but glad they did, that person does not belong on the road quit making issues where there isn’t any.”

Another said: “What an idiot. Obviously getting some practice in for drug driving on a full licence.”

A spokesperson for the police said: “This driver was being supervised by a qualified driver on Garstang Road, Preston when he was stopped by #HO30. The driver was getting some practice in prior to his driving test in May.

“Unfortunately the driver failed a roadside DrugWipeUK for cannabis.”

Powered by WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform® architecture, new Fireboxes deliver enhanced performance and added security capabilities that MSPs and IT admins can easily manage in WatchGuard Cloud

SEATTLE – February 16, 2023 – WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader in unified cybersecurity, today announced the release of its new Firebox T25/T25-W, T45/T45-POE/T45-W-POE, and T85-POE tabletop firewall appliances. Powered by WatchGuard’s Unified Security Platform® architecture to deliver comprehensive security and simplified management through WatchGuard Cloud, these new firewalls are engineered to provide the performance that remote and distributed business environments need for better protection against the latest network security threats.

With more memory and faster processing speeds for enhanced throughput, this new line of Firebox products enables WatchGuard partners, MSPs, and IT administrators to secure branch offices, office equipment, remote devices, retail point-of-sale (POS) software, and remote users from complex and emerging threats, while minimizing network configuration and management requirements.

“IT environments of all types and sizes face advanced and sophisticated threats from attackers, but SMBs and branch offices typically don’t have dedicated technical staff to configure, install and manage network security appliances,” said Ryan Poutre, product manager at WatchGuard Technologies. “This new generation of Fireboxes takes full advantage of our Unified Security Platform architecture, enabling MSPs to provide the robust solutions and simplified management they require to meet the needs of a wide range of customers and deployment scenarios.”

With enterprise-class security services like APT Blocker (sandbox malware detection) and ThreatSync for shared knowledge between endpoint and network, the new Fireboxes are ideal for small businesses that lack a designated security team. Beyond providing advanced malware protection for distributed environments, the new appliances include SD-WAN to optimize network performance by dynamically distributing network traffic across multiple connections based on defined policies. These new Fireboxes take advantage of the latest updates in WatchGuard Cloud to display a graphical real-time update of SD-WAN link status and any failovers, and they also support the latest Fireware capabilities for load sharing across multiple links. These capabilities are included in all of WatchGuard's service packages.

“WatchGuard’s tabletop Firebox appliances give us all the features and security protection of their bigger rackmount brothers, and make us more efficient with zero-touch provisioning to deploy and configure devices, upgrade firmware and apply policies after a remote user activates a device. We can quickly deploy and configure SD-WAN via WatchGuard Cloud from remote locations,” said Troy Midwood, chief technology officer at Aabyss. “These appliances are another example of WatchGuard’s focus on building great products that enable our MSP business.”

Key features for each of the new Firebox products include:

• WatchGuard Firebox T25/T25-W: Provides stand-alone or centrally managed protection for small offices, home offices, and retail environments with complete enterprise-level network security. Zero-touch deployment via WatchGuard Cloud enables quick setup at remote locations to ensure secure connections. Provides up to 403 Mbps UTM throughput (running Gateway AntiVirus, IPS, and Application Control) and five 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
• WatchGuard Firebox T45/T45-POE/T45-W-POE: Delivers stand-alone or centrally managed enterprise-level security for small and midsize businesses. Boosts visibility into network activity/security events. Provides flexible management tools that enable quick setup at remote locations for secure business connections. Provides up to 557 Mbps UTM throughput and includes five 1 Gigabit Ethernet ports. The -POE models include one POE+ port to provide power to other devices like Wi-Fi access points.
• WatchGuard Firebox T85-POE: Delivers high-performance, enterprise-level security that evolves with network requirements. Features SD-WAN, full UTM protection at over 940 Mbps, and expansion modules for integrated fiber or 4G connectivity. Also provides users with two Power-over-Ethernet (PoE+) ports enabling power to peripheral devices.

Additional Resources:

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.
WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in unified cybersecurity. Our Unified Security Platform™ approach is uniquely designed for managed service providers to deliver world-class security that increases their business scale and velocity while also improving operational efficiency. Trusted by more than 17,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 250,000 customers, the company’s award-winning products and services span network security and intelligence, advanced endpoint protection, multi-factor authentication, and secure Wi-Fi. Together, they offer five critical elements of a security platform: comprehensive security, shared knowledge, clarity & control, operational alignment, and automation. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit WatchGuard.com.

For additional information, promotions and updates, follow WatchGuard on Twitter (@WatchGuard), on Facebook, or on the LinkedIn Company page. Also, visit our InfoSec blog, Secplicity, for real-time information about the latest threats and how to cope with them at www.secplicity.org. Subscribe to The 443 – Security Simplified podcast at Secplicity.org, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

WatchGuard is a registered trademark of WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. All other marks are property of their respective owners.

Chris Warfield
WatchGuard Technologies, Inc 
1.206.876.8380
chris.warfield@watchguard.com

Kevin Pedraja
Voxus PR
watchguard@voxuspr.com

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