SonicWALL SonicOS 5.6 deep packet inspection

The SonicOS 5.6 deep packet inspection for SSL traffic is an upgrade to the operating system for the SonicWALL TZ, NSA and E-Class NSA firewalls.

It provides protection, from the company’s reassembly free deep packet inspection (RFDPI) engine, to SSL encrypted traffic and uses the intelligence from the company’s GRID Network of more than four million endpoints, and its in-house security research team, to provide claimed absolute security at the network gateway.

The DPI-SSL feature does not rely on a proxy configuration on the endpoints to provide optimised protection against encrypted threats and to enforce corporate data policies. The technology can inspect inside all SSL sessions across all ports, independently of the protocol, resulting in both encrypted and decrypted data being scanned, monitored and protected. The technology can be deployed both for outbound connections from the clients or to inbound connections to the servers. Server side DPI-SSL service options include gateway antivirus, gateway antispyware, intrusion prevention and application control.

It includes USB 3G and modem failover support to the NSA and E-Class NSA series, expanding this functionality from the TZ product line and adding an additional failover option for mission-critical networks. The terminal services agent allows transparent authentication and identification of users in such environments. Routing over VPN brings another layer of network resilience and ease of administration by preserving traffic continuity on VPN networks when tunnels are temporarily disabled or while the VPN deployment is undergoing changes.