News
WatchGuard’s New Fireboxes Chew Through Encrypted Traffic
August 2017 by Marc Jacob
WatchGuard® Technologies has announced hardware upgrades to its
Firebox® M Series to handle the rapid proliferation of encrypted web traffic and
offer more flexibility. With the new M470, M570 and M670 appliances, users can add
additional network modules to increase the number of copper or fibre ports available
to support the growing use of 10G fibre in midsize enterprise data centres. The new
Firebox M Series appliances also enable users to inspect encrypted traffic with
industry-leading performance with all security services enabled. According to
Miercom, an independent testing lab, the updated Firebox M370 performs full HTTPS
inspection 94% faster than competing solutions.
Network defences that don’t adequately process and inspect encrypted traffic leave
employees, customers and partners vulnerable to cyber attacks. According to a 2016
Ponemon study, 41 percent of attacks in 2016 used encryption to disguise their entry
into the network or hide their connection to a Command and Control server. NSS Labs,
Inc. forecasts that as adoption rates continue to climb, 75 percent of web traffic
will be encrypted by 2019. A firewall that lacks the processing power necessary to
inspect high volumes of encrypted traffic will need to turn off some security
services or compromise throughput in order to manage the burden.
KEY FEATURES:
· Dramatically Improved Performance: As validated by Miercom, the new
Firebox M Series offers approximately three times the performance of competing
products.
· Flexibility Through Increased Port Density: All new appliances (except
the M370) have an expansion slot for additional ports. 4x10Gb fibre, 8x1Gb copper or
8x1Gb fibre network modules are available as well.
· Intel processors with AES-NI and CaveCreek crypto acceleration: New
chipsets allow the new M Series appliances industry-leading performance in HTTPS
content inspection and fast processing of traffic even with all security services
enabled.
