Multi-Gigabit Application Intelligent Firewall

Provides Intrusion Prevention, Application Intelligence and Control functionality while offering improved efficiency, scalability and performance

LOOPHOLD Security Distribution, the local distributor of SonicWALL technology, has announced the SonicWALL E-Class Network Security Appliance (NSA) E8500, a new advanced Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) firewall with Application Intelligence and Control designed for the enterprise.

The NSA E8500 extends the protection of SonicWALL’s network security appliances to include the management and control of data and applications that pass through the network. The NSA E8500 enhances this threat protection with intuitive visualisation tools that offer network administrators a wide range of data points on applications traversing the network, including who is using them, as well as the potential security impact.

Unparalleled intelligence, security and control

As enterprises attempt to achieve more productivity benefits from their network infrastructure, they have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of mobile devices allowing employees to work from anywhere, anytime.

At the same time, the growth of Web 2.0 applications has provided widely used collaboration tools. Converged communications has emerged as another powerful productivity enabler as voice and video traffic start to co-exist with the more traditional data traffic.

These technology trends present a fundamental problem for network administrators – total traffic intelligence. This intelligence is required for performance analysis, discovery and immediate action to provide smooth operations of critical systems, yet this intelligence has become increasingly elusive to capture. As a result, traditional firewalls have grown blind to the application traffic on the network and to the threats that can travel through these applications.

Says Martin Tassev, MD at LOOPHOLD Security Distribution, “The simple fact is, productivity can’t be jeopardised for the sake of security. In the current business landscape, mobility and collaboration are essential to remain competitive yet this often means network administrators start to lose control of the network. Thus, organisations need to ensure that their network is protected by a solution that is built to cope with these new security challenges, so that businesses can utilise the benefits of new workforce trends and technologies with the peace of mind that their network is safe.”

Intuitive traffic visualisation allows the NSA E8500 to display traffic intelligence in an easy-to-understand form that enables fast network assessment. The integration of advanced networking and remote access technologies allows SonicWALL to verify and defend the security of traditional and mobile wireless networks, users and applications — and their endpoint devices — while scanning and disinfecting the data stream across platforms and perimeters.  Robust Re-assembly Free Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) capabilities feed into the NSA E8500’s integrated Application Intelligence engine, allowing the appliance to inspect hundreds of thousands of connections simultaneously with near zero latency and no file size limitations. Along with the technological scalability, SonicWALL’s policy and administration management can scale as customers grow and evolve.

Through the incorporation of SonicWALL’s existing foundation of E-Class NSA Series firewalls, the NSA E8500 delivers the following enterprise class features:

• Application Intelligence and Control provides a configurable set of granular policies per user, application, schedule or IP subnet. These policies can be used to automate application bandwidth allocation, restrict transfer of specific files, scan attachments using user-configurable criteria, control and inspect both internal and external Web access and enable users to add custom signatures.
• Intuitive Visualization Tools offer IT administrators a wide range of data points on applications traversing the network, including who is using them, and potential security impact.
• SonicWALL Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection is capable of controlling more than 1,100 unique applications on the network and inspecting hundreds of thousands of connections simultaneously across 65,535 ports, with nearly zero latency and unlimited stream size.
• Powerful intrusion prevention and malware protection against a comprehensive array of network-based application layer threats by scanning packet payloads for worms, Trojans, software vulnerabilities, peer-to-peer and instant messenger applications, backdoor exploits, and other malicious code.
• Flexible deployment as either a traditional gateway or as an inline solution that allows administrators to keep their existing infrastructure, while adding application intelligence and control as an extra layer of network security and visibility to their network.

Dynamic security for the Global Network

To help customers cope with rapidly evolving and continuously changing threats, SonicWALL is committed to its vision of Dynamic Security for the Global Network, in which security solutions dynamically adapt to the continuously shifting threats and easily adjust to new technologies or business demands.