That regulation has real teeth. Bogus credit card charges resulting from a hacker's efforts lead to a security audit and fines of up to $500,000, notes Paradigm CTO Greg May.

Since Hardee's restaurants don't have an IT staffer behind the counter, the company looked for a solution that included a central management console. They found it in UTMs from Fortinet, choosing the Fortimanager, FortiGate and FortiWiFi products. Why WiFi? The chain has WiFi hotspots that need to be locked out of X-rated sites, and in the future the company hopes to mine marketing data from its public network, says May.

The system includes a firewall that segments traffic and sets up different security rules for each segment, an anti-virus function and content filtering. The system includes even more functions, such as a VPN, that Paradigm could easily turn on if needed.

Security appliances are getting a lot of buzz and there's plenty of debate about the virtues of UTM versus a best of breed approach. But it's worth noting that any security appliance, whether multifunction or single function, comes with some caveats. "In general, appliances can not be virtualized," says Joel Pogar, director of security and network solutions with the Forsythe Solutions Group, a technology consulting and infrastructure solutions provider. And once an appliance is integrated into the network environment, it can be difficult to remove, he adds.

Even so, Pogar says that appliances, both multifunction and best of breed, have a number of advantages over conventional solutions, including performance. That's because the hardware and the OS are optimized for each other. And since applications are preinstalled on the appliance, configuration and deployment can be completed very quickly.

If UTMs are easier to manage, and best of breed devices offer tailored functionality, is there a way to get both? There may be. Crossbeam Systems offers an appliance that allows customers to run security services from any of Crossbeam's 20 or so best-of-breed partners.

Richard Isenberg, director of security for CheckFree, a provider of financial e-commerce products and services recently purchased by Fiserv, says his company's growth spurt brought on an epidemic of what you might call box creep. "We were adding boxes in every function, with more hardware costs and more people to manage."

Although that sounds like an argument for deployment of a conventional UTM, Isenberg says he didn't like the idea of getting all of his software from a single vendor. "Sure, the firewall might be great, but maybe the IDS isn't," he says. "Why should I settle?"