Company:Untangle

Untangle, Inc.

File:Untangle company logo.png
Type	Private
Industry	Security software, security appliances, Internet security, network security
Founded	2003
Headquarters	San Jose, California, USA
Key people	CEO: Scott Devens Founder: John Irwin Founder: Dirk Morris
Products	Web content filtering, anti-spam, antivirus, anti-phishing, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, Application Control, firewall, OpenVPN, bandwidth management, web cache
Website	untangle.com

Untangle is a subsidiary of Providence Strategic Growth based in San Jose, California, which provides network management software. Untangle NG Firewall is used by nearly 40,000 organizations worldwide.

History

Untangle was founded in 2003 as Metavize, Inc. by John Irwin and Dirk Morris. In 2006, Metavize raised a $10.5M series-A venture funding round from CMEA Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners, named Bob Walters as CEO, and renamed to Untangle, Inc. In 2007, Untangle released the Untangle Gateway Platform as open source under the GPLv2 license.

In October 2009, Untangle released Untangle 7.0 which included improvements to its reporting capabilities. In December 2009, Untangle released Untangle 7.1 which included improvements to its web filtering and policy management applications. In March 2010, Untangle released Untangle 7.2 which included its Captive Portal application.

Untangle released a free bookmark utility called SaveFace in May 2010, in response to continued loosening of default privacy settings in Facebook user accounts. In June 2010 Untangle released Untangle 7.3, enabling the company's software to be used by OEM hardware manufacturers to produce their own branded multi-function firewalls and UTM appliances. In August 2010 Untangle released Untangle 7.4, wherein it simplified its packages to Lite, Standard, and Premium.

In November 2010 Untangle released Untangle 8.0, which included Bandwidth Control. In February 2011 Untangle released Untangle 8.1, which included Web Cache. Untangle 9.0 was released later in 2011, and included IPsec VPN support.

In February 2012 Untangle released Untangle 9.2, which included Application Control. Application Control allows users to block, flag, or tarpit applications and protocols. For a greater degree of control, administrators can create custom rules in the proprietary Integrated Rules Engine (IRE), which target more complex traffic patterns.

In March, 2012, Untangle released a new appliance line, answering the request of customers for an easier way to deploy Untangle on certified hardware.

In April, 2012, Untangle changed the content of the Standard Package to include both IPsec VPN and Application Control.

In August, 2012, Untangle released Untangle 9.3, including full tunnel OpenVPN.

In January, 2013, Untangle released Untangle 9.4, including an all-new Captive Portal to work with its Integrated Rules Engine (IRE), allowing for varied use cases like mobile device management for bring your own device (BYOD) environments, integration with payment providers to support paid access for wi-fi hotspots, and separate policies for wi-fi and wired users. Other changes included an improved Session Viewer and new Host Table view.

In September, 2013, Untangle released Untangle 10.0, including HTTPS Inspector, a new app that allows Untangle to inspect traffic over HTTPS. This allows HTTPS traffic to be scanned by the full suite of Untangle applications and allow rules to be applied to it. Other improvements include IPv6 configurability, 802.1q tagged alias (VLAN tagging) support, a simpler and more powerful NAT implementation and better PPPoE support.

On October 1, 2013, Untangle acquired Cymphonix Corporation, an Internet management network appliance company.

On December 5, 2013, Untangle acquired some assets of eSoft, a UTM firewall company.

In January, 2014, Untangle renamed its "Untangle" product to "Untangle Next Generation (NG) Firewall". It also introduced a new product line, Untangle Internet Content (IC) Control.

In February, 2014, Untangle released Untangle NG Firewall version 10.1 featuring high availability.

In April, 2014, Untangle changed the name of its "Lite" package to "Free" and its "Premium" package to "Complete". It also retired its "Standard" package.

On April 21, 2014, Untangle acquired the consumer end point protection division of Total Defense.

On September 12, 2016, Untangle announced it had been acquired by Providence Strategic Growth, itself a unit of Providence Equity Partners. Untangle also announced a new CEO, Scott Devens.

Products

Untangle applications include anti-spam, content filtering, antivirus, anti-phishing, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, firewall, OpenVPN, router, and web cache software.

Untangle's NG Firewall platform and free applications are released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL), many components with the GNU Classpath exception. Certain third-party components distributed with the Untangle Software are licensed under other free license terms. The Complete package is under a proprietary EULA.