Mobility and security go together like water and oil, and one vendor defied the laws of nature and mixed the two. Our judges determined that this year's best overall mobile security product was Whale Communications' Intelligent Application Gateway Express Edition 4.0.

This SSL VPN brings enterprise-class policy enforcement for small to midsized businesses (SMBs). Its most compelling feature is the way it works completely on the application layer without having to resort to lower layer tunneling. Some additional features include SSL VPN resource cloaking, application firewalling, integrated authentication and authorization, and dynamic policy enforcement. It can handle up to 250 concurrent users and can also be upgraded with support for Layer 3 connectivity to enable non-Web applications. The product is suited for use in SMBs or specific divisions of larger corporations; it aims to provide secure remote access while keeping IT overhead low.

The Express Edition is also designed to offer administrators out-of-the-box functionality with an easy setup, incorporating an endpoint security compliance check. It delivers password change management, enterprise portal integration and various monitoring views to keep things simple.

Despite its compelling features, our panel of judges did have a few complaints about the Intelligent Application Gateway Express Edition, ranking it low for ease of use. Another judge called the product "interesting but too expensive." Entry level pricing for the Express Edition begins at $18,200.

Amy Kucharik