Secure Computing Readies Appliance

The new appliance will be released later this year or early next year, said Paul DeBernardi, director of product marketing at Secure, based here.

Both Gauntlet and Sidewinder are "hybrid" firewalls that perform stateful packet inspection and application-level filtering for better protection, DeBernardi said. The new appliance will expand the hybrid feature set, he said.

The product, called NGF (Next-Generation Firewall) until the company decides on a name, will retain Sidewinder's SecureOS operating system, DeBernardi said. Also, it will use Intel chips, not those based on Sun Microsystems' SPARC, which many Gauntlet implementations used.

NGF will have Gauntlet's embedded antivirus and adaptive proxy features, and Secure plans to release a tool that builds on Gauntlet's enterprise management capabilities, he said. NGF also will feature new embedded technology to offload denial-of-service attacks.

Solution providers said Secure's plan is on the mark.

"It looks like great technology. They took the best out of Gauntlet and the best out of Sidewinder and molded them together," said Marc Suttle, engineer at Dallas-based ANI Direct, which sells both firewalls.

Gauntlet and Sidewinder are "the two most secure proxy-based firewalls," he said. "Merging the two can only make a stronger firewall."

Mark Schulstad, director of sales and marketing at Seattle-based Conjungi Networks, said Secure's strategy is logical for the company and not painful for Gauntlet customers. "It makes sense," he said.

NGF will be released in two phases, with the second arriving in the summer of 2003. Then, Secure intends to release an "end-of-life" plan for current versions of Gauntlet and Sidewinder but will support them into 2004.

Estimated pricing for the appliance, which will come in four models to meet the needs of small offices to large enterprises, will range from $6,000 to $33,000.