NOW announces major new Upgrade to VPN/Firewall Appliance with Intrusion Dectection

The latest VPN/Firewall appliance released by SnapGear, the 575, includes active anti-intrusion, broadband fail-over/DMZ support plus Web proxy cache features.

We can now publicize the general availability of the 575, which offers a robust new intrusion detection system (IDS) and advanced Web proxy cache technology that significantly improves network security and performance.

The 575 device gives small to medium enterprises a highly integrated solution for perimeter network security and secure communication. SnapGear appliances are based upon SnapGear Embedded Linux, a secure Linux distribution used in more than 20 million devices that combines the advantages of open source technology and commercial security protection. The open design allows major feature upgrades to be performed through flash memory updates that can be applied to hundreds of devices simultaneously with the SnapGear Central Management System (CMS).

The new IDS is built around the world's most widely deployed open source software for intrusion detection called Snort(tm). Snort can identify thousands of different attacks through a comprehensive signature database. Network administrators can use graphical open source tools to analyse alerts captured in the system logs in order to locate and quickly correct weaknesses in perimeter defences.

With the new Web cache proxy features powered by Squid(tm), the most popular open source software for proxy cache, the upgraded 575 also lets customers easily add more users to an existing Internet connection without sacrificing performance. Network users can also enjoy a significantly faster Web surfing experience.

Other features include the ability to configure the appliance as either dual-WAN attachment with fail-over and load balancing or to deploy the second port as a DMZ (demilitarised zone). The 575 holds both ICSA stateful firewall and VPNC VPN interoperability certifications, and includes IPsec peer-to-peer and PPTP client/server VPN technology.