WatchGuard Technologies announced that it is extending
their enterprise-class firewall capabilities to mainstream businesses with the
latest release of the next-generation XTM 8 Series family of multifunction
security appliances.

 

This move extends WatchGuard’s next-generation firewall
(NGFW) capabilities, which includes advanced firewalling, Application Control,
and intrusion prevention system (IPS), to mainstream business networks.  

 

Built for speed, the WatchGuard next-generation XTM 8 Series delivers up to 5Gbps firewall throughput that
making it ideal for demanding networks of 1,000 to 5,000 users.

 

With Application Control and IPS activated, the XTM 8
Series achieves a faster-than-line-speed 1.2Gbps throughput, which represents a
major leap forward for next-generation firewalls in delivering high security
without compromising network performance.

 

Leveraging WatchGuard’s advanced firewall technology,
which includes stateful packet inspection, deep packet inspection and
WatchGuard’s proprietary proxy technology, the XTM 8 Series embodies the most
robust and in-depth security technologies available today to protect business
networks.

 

With its built in application proxies, the WatchGuard XTM
8 Series natively stops a myriad of blended threats, fragmented and malformed
packet attacks, spyware, malware, denial of service and many other types of
threats and attacks.

 

“Until now, next-generation firewalls were available
only to enterprise organizations,” said Roger Klorese, director, Product
Management, WatchGuard Technologies.

 

“By extending next-generation firewall capabilities
to the WatchGuard XTM 8 Series, businesses of all sizes can now leverage
advanced firewalling, Application Control and integrated IPS.  This gives
businesses the latest tools to keep their data, applications and networks safe
while maintaining control over social media and Web 2.0 applications,”
Klorese added.

 

With WatchGuard Application Control, businesses now gain
in-depth, granular control over Web 2.0 applications, such as Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn and hundreds more.  Not only does WatchGuard Application
Control protect against the next-generation of threats that leverage these
popular applications, now businesses can rein in how individual employees use
such applications, directly from the corporate firewall.

 

WatchGuard Application Control enables the firewall to
identify and control nearly 2,000 web 2.0 and social media applications.
This level of control gives businesses new found freedom to align
business needs with IT and security policies.  

 

By doing so, businesses gain greater efficiencies and
improved productivity, and administrators gain unprecedented visibility and
control over applications traversing their networks.

 

Additionally, the WatchGuard XTM 8 Series offers unique
protection against threats that attempt to hide in encrypted HTTPS data
streams.

 

By way of WatchGuard’s HTTPS proxy technology that
intercepts, scans and rebuilds HTTPS data streams, administrators can now
accurately audit, report and protect users from receiving dangerous file types.

 

With a projected annual growth rate of more than 20
percent, VoIP represents an equally fast growing threat vector in commercial
networks.  Because of this, threats such as DoS attacks on VoIP networks,
directory harvesting, and “vishing” attacks are rapidly increasing in
popularity.  

 

Unlike other next-generation firewalls that merely
provide network address translation to obscure a VoIP system, the WatchGuard
XTM 8 Series provides application-level security for SIP and H.323 protocols.

 

These security capabilities conceal business VoIP systems
and simultaneously harden them to repel directory harvesting attacks, input
validation hacks (buffer overflows), and other VoIP threats.

 

Because many botnets use the same protocols used for
legitimate business applications, such as instant messaging, administrators are
faced with limited options eliminate IM or risk botnet infection, loss of
resources and control.

 

With the WatchGuard XTM 8 Series, administrators can rest
assured by having both the convenience of IM and the protection from botnets.
The appliances provide application inspection as well as port and
protocol identification to ensure application traffic is valid and safe.  

 

Additionally, the WatchGuard HTTPS inspection works in
tandem with IM and P2P application blocking, which foils even those bots that
use encryption to evade detection.

 

By Telecomlead.com Team
[email protected]