SonicWALL E-class network security appliance E8500

SonicWALL has announced the E-class network security appliance E8500, an advanced intrusion prevention system firewall with application intelligence and control designed for the enterprise.

The appliance extends the protection of the company’s network security appliances to include the management and control of data and applications that pass through the network.

It 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.

Intuitive traffic visualisation allows the appliance 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.

Reassembly-free deep packet inspection capabilities feed into the appliance’s integrated application intelligence engine, allowing it to inspect hundreds of thousands of connections simultaneously with near zero latency and no file size limitations. Along with the technological scalability, the company’s policy and administration management can scale as customers grow and evolve.

Its 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.

The appliance’s visualisation tools offer IT administrators a wide range of data points on applications across the network, including who is using them and potential security impact.

Its reassembly-free deep packet inspection is capable of controlling more than 1100 different applications on the network and inspecting hundreds of thousands of connections simultaneously across 65,535 ports, with nearly zero latency and unlimited stream size.

The appliance features 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 is possible 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.