At the cornerstone of most network security deployment is the venerable firewall, which in recent years has evolved to become a Next Generation Firewall (NGFW). The promise of NGFW platforms is that in addition to port level control, there is also a degree of application visibility to protect networks.
This past week, multiple NGFW vendors updated there wares with new and updated offerings.
McAfee
Intel Security’s McAfee division announced its new NGFW platform which also includes an integrate Intrusion Prevention System (IPS).
There are multiple version of the platform with the top-end FWL-5206 version offering enterprises up to 120 Gbps of throughput, when full inspection capabilities are not enabled. McAfee has raterd the F2L-5206 at 30 Gbps of throughput when inspection is enabled. When leveraged for its VPN capabilities the FWL-5206 provides 18 Gbps of throughput.
The platform also provides optional antispam, antivirus and URL filtering options.
Fortinet
Fortinet announced its FortiGate-3810D Firewall with the big feature being the ability to support 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE) interface cards. The three Rack Unit (3RU) sized device can deliver up to 300 Gbps of throughput, according to Fortinet.
“The data center spent 10 years moving from 1G to 10G — the move to 100G will happen much faster,” John Maddison, vice president of marketing products for Fortinet, said in a statement. “The FortiGate-3810D allows customers to build 100G data centers without worrying about high speed connectivity or throughput of the core firewall.”
Palo Alto Networks
While McAfee and Fortinet’s new Firewall are both physical hardware, Palto Alto Networks updated its virtual firewall VM series.
The Palo Alto VM series benefits from a partnership with VMware and currently includes the Palo Alto Networks VM-1000-HV, which supports VMware’s NSX network virtualization technologies. The VM-1000-HV is also set to be supported for deployment on the VMware vCloud Air hybrid cloud service.
“The latest release of our VM-Series was specifically designed with the cloud in mind,” — Lee Klarich, senior vice president of Product Management, Palo Alto Networks said in a statement. “It provides consistent automated protection for cloud computing environments so organizations can take advantage of the productivity and cost benefits provided by the cloud without compromising security.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
