Networking hardware maker Netgear aimed beyond home and small businesses this week, introducing three products on Monday that take advantage of its recent acquisition of China-based CP Secure.

The three security threat management (STM) products are the first to be sold under Netgear's ProSecure brand. The products use a stream-based scanning technology acquired when the Netgear bought China-based CP Secure in a deal that closed in December for $14 million in cash.

With the announcement, the company expanded its products beyond its traditional firewall, VPN and network offerings for small and home offices. Netgear is well aware of the pitfalls in attempting to sell to larger offices and plans to quickly release more products in the category, said Jason Leung, senior product manager for the company's SMB security group.

"If you look at a lot of products that Netgear has traditionally built for SMBs, it included a pretty slim software layer," Leung said. "What you saw in December, when we closed the acquisition of CPSecure, is that our security-software engineering force expanded almost instantly. We are going to make investments in, and expand, that team."

By aiming for larger businesses, Netgear will find itself competing head-to-head with two large companies that have separate brands for targeting the consumer and small-business markets: Cisco, through its acquisition of Linksys in 2003, and Check Point Software Technologies, which created SofaWare in 1999.

This week, Cisco also unveiled a gateway spam- and virus-blocking appliance, and security firm Websense announced it would acquire Defensio, a Web 2.0 security service.

The three products announced by Netgear in its ProSecure family aim to deliver e-mail and Web security to companies with up to 600 employees.

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