SonicWall Upgrade Offers Protection At The Network Gateway

The Realtime Gateway Anti-Virus upgrade—available for SonicWall's entire product line—provides a host of enterprise-class security services including threat management, intrusion-prevention service, spyware protection and gateway realtime blacklist spam filtering. It is available immediately and is free for all existing SonicWall customers.

According to Matthew Medeiros, CEO of the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, the new solution also features virtual LAN support and dynamic routing, two capabilities generally reserved for firewall boxes in the five-figure price range.

"Businesses cannot afford the kind of network outages resulting from virus attacks," Medeiros said. "The market is more than ready for a comprehensive solution that is easy to manage and can be delivered on the existing firewall."

Medeiros said the new solution includes granular policy tools and an intuitive user interface to enable administrators to configure a custom set of detection and prevention policies tailored to their network environment. Network administrators can manage Realtime Gateway Anti-Virus, deploy network/ workstation or server antivirus, and manage remote installations using SonicWall's Global Management System, all from the firewall console, he said.

Perhaps most importantly, Realtime Gateway Anti-Virus boasts a patent-pending deep-packet inspection engine that delivers threat protection directly on the gateway. To do this, the engine matches downloaded, e-mailed and compressed files against an extensive signature database created by a variety of sources, including SonicWall's SonicAlert Team.

Ray Pompon, network security consultant at Conjungi Networks, Seattle, said his customers have been clamoring for deep-packet inspection functionality.

"This [solution] offers not only the ability to block inbound threats, but also the ability to control chat, [peer-to-peer], browser-based attacks and more," Pompon said. "When you consider all of the functionality this [solution] provides, it's an exciting product for businesses that aren't able to afford a full-blown antivirus gateway."