WatchGuard Brings Next-Generation Firewalls to Mainstream Businesses

SEATTLE, July 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader of business security solutions, today announced that it is extending their enterprise-class, next-generation firewall capabilities to mainstream businesses with the latest release of the next-generation XTM 8 Series family of multifunction security appliances.  This move now 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, 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 "defense-in-depth" 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 of Product Management at 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."

WatchGuard Application Control – Key to Controlling Social Media in the Workplace

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.

Botnets – hijacked computers containing malware applications – are also major concerns and liabilities for today's businesses.  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.

With powerful defense-in-depth security, multi-WAN failover, load-balancing, high-availability and model upgradeability, the next-generation WatchGuard XTM 8 Series provides businesses with a pragmatic solution for maximum uptime, performance and reliability.

Pricing and Availability

The WatchGuard XTM 8 Series NGFW is available now from WatchGuard resellers worldwide.  Pricing for the WatchGuard XTM 8 Series NGFW starts at $8,499.  More information is available at www.watchguard.com.

About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

Since 1996, WatchGuard® Technologies, Inc. has been the advanced technology leader of business security solutions, providing mission-critical protection to hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide.  The WatchGuard family of wired and wireless unified threat management appliances, messaging, content security and SSL VPN remote access solutions provide extensible network, application and data protection, as well as unparalleled network visibility, management and control.  WatchGuard products are backed by WatchGuard LiveSecurity® Service, an innovative support, maintenance, and education program.  WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle and has offices serving North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit http://www.watchguard.com/.

WatchGuard is a registered trademark of WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.  All other marks are property of their respective owners.

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SOURCE WatchGuard Technologies