Firewalls offer application awareness and control.
Press Release Summary:
NSA firewalls are available with Application Firewall, which identifies and classifies applications, provides visibility into user-specific application and content access, and automates appropriate response to any risk. Features provide granular policy control by determining user-specific access to content and applications, regardless of port and protocol. Providing network policy control and compliance, firewall software also lets administrators control how bandwidth is allocated.
Original Press Release:
SonicWALL Provides Unparalleled Visibility into Network Activity with the Introduction of Application Aware Firewalling
Enables Application Awareness and Control Across SonicWALL's NSA Product Line
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov. 19 -- SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ:SNWL), a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced the introduction and immediate availability of Application Aware Firewalling for all next generation SonicWALL NSA firewalls. This advancement, called Application Firewall, dramatically enhances network productivity and security by demystifying application access and control, providing unparalleled visibility into network activity. Application Firewall identifies and classifies applications, provides visibility into user specific application and content access, and automates the appropriate response to any risk, vastly improving the policy control and compliance of today's networks.
Unlike traditional firewalls that inspect only port and protocol, the Application Firewall enables the administrator to easily identify, classify, and enforce policies based on application or application-specific content. These features provide more granular policy control to administrators by determining user specific access to content and applications, regardless of port and protocol. While most Unified Threat Management (UTM) devices solely provide log and block options, the Application Firewall provides administrators a list of pre-defined and custom actions allowing bandwidth management enforcement and custom end user message support in addition to regular signature updates.
Key features in the Application Firewall include;
-- Application Bandwidth Management: Allows administrators to control how bandwidth is allocated based on the application in use. This control provides the choice of blocking the application, limiting the bandwidth that the application can use or guaranteeing a committed amount of bandwidth. In addition, bandwidth management policy rules can be applied based on time and date, and by user or group. Examples include limiting the bandwidth for streaming video and audio applications during the work-day or ensuring that specific users of a cloud-based sales productivity application get the bandwidth they need at the end of quarter.
-- Application Identification, Blocking and Notification: Administrators can now easily identify specific applications, block their use, and then automatically notify the user as to why the application was blocked. For example, an organization may wish to detect and control a single or group of applications which operate on a variety of ports open through the firewall. The Application Firewall can detect attempted use of these applications, block their use and then automatically notify the end-user with an appropriate message. This enforces acceptable use policies while increasing employee and network resource productivity. In addition, the administrator can choose to apply such policies to a group of applications. They can create their own group or use a SonicWALL defined group of applications (i.e. Peer-to-Peer), with the application signatures of the SonicWALL defined groups regularly and automatically updated by SonicWALL. The use of SonicWALL defined groups saves time in creating and maintaining application identification and enforcement policies.
-- Data Awareness and Control: The Application Firewall also can analyze data, including FTP file transfers, e-mail attachments and e-mail, and browser-based content. Policy rules can be implemented to identify specific content and take appropriate action. Examples include blocking outbound web-based e-mail which contains the phrase "company confidential" or notifying IT when FTP files are transferred which contain specific project names. Notifications to the sender can be automatically generated if desired and rules can be applied based on date, time, users/groups and more.
"The Application Firewall is more than simply an enhancement for UTM," said SonicWALL's Patrick Sweeney, Vice President of Network Security. "The next generation firewall delivers industry-leading network security at the application layer, providing an all-encompassing threat and application management tool. Application Firewall will enable administrators to protect the entire infrastructure against threats and manage applications and bandwidth usage that would have previously been almost impossible."
SonicWALL's Application Firewall, coupled with the UTM technology, and the industry-leading performance of the NSA firewall allows customers to not only protect the entire network, but to better manage their businesses. Outside of its threat management capabilities, the firewall's ability to quickly distinguish between safe and harmful applications enhances business-wide productivity -- not simply productivity within IT departments.
The Application Firewall is available on all SonicWALL NSA systems from the NSA 240, the performance leader for the SMB, to the enterprise-class NSA E7500, a 16-core system with up to 5.6 Gbps of stateful throughput performance.
For more information please visit: http://www.sonicwall.com/.
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About SonicWALL, Inc.
SonicWALL is committed to improving the performance and productivity of businesses of all sizes by engineering the cost and complexity out of running a secure network. Over one million SonicWALL appliances have been shipped through its global network of ten thousand channel partners to keep tens of millions of worldwide business computer users safe and in control of their data. SonicWALL's award-winning solutions include network security, secure remote access, content security, backup and recovery, and policy and management technology. For more information, visit the company web site at http://www.sonicwall.com/.
NOTE: SonicWALL is a registered trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
