Your Firewall should extend beyond blocking network threats to protect, manage and control application traffic. Traditional firewalls are blind to the vulnerabilities of web based applications and are unable to recognize the difference between secure versus potentially un-secure traffic. SonicWALL™ Next-Generation firewalls provide insight into the applications themselves which allows you to identify and control all of the applications being used on your network. This additional control enhances compliance and data leakage prevention by identifying applications based on their unique signatures rather than ports or protocols. The firewall recognizes usage patterns and creates granular policies for applications, users or even groups of users, as well as time of day and other variables, for flexible control that can fit any network requirement. This data can be used to fine tune application usage and allocate bandwidth for mission-critical or latency-sensitive applications so productivity isn’t hampered.
- Control the applications allowed on the network – Application visualization lets you determine what browsers are being used before you create a policy to block or control certain application usage.
- Manage the bandwidth for critical applications – Ensure mission-critical applications have priority over unproductive Web surfing to improve business productivity.
- Block peer-to-peer applications – Now you can simply create one policy to block all P2P apps preventing the download of unlicensed versions of copyrighted media which can quickly consume bandwidth or transmit malware.
- Block unproductive components of applications – While it might be counterproductive to block all social networking applications, you can control how they can be used in your workplace.
- Visualize your application traffic – Visualization provides administrators with instant feedback on network traffic flows; what’s happening on my network? Who’s wasting my bandwidth? Why is my network so slow?
- Manage bandwidth for a group of users – Instead of strict controls, many companies have found that employees are happier if you let them have full access to the web, even if they have reduced bandwidth for unproductive sites or create a policy to exclude the executive team from streaming video bandwidth
management if they really need. - Block viruses from entering your network – Security is the reason you have a firewall! Next-Generation firewalls, are capable of blocking millions of threats from entering the network, before they become a danger to your users. The ability to prevent malware such as viruses, spyware, keyloggers, Trojans and intrusion attempts from entering the network at the gateway relieves the organization from great risk and spares potentially wasted resources.
- Identify connections by country – Is a connection to a foreign country benign from somebody browsing on the Web, or is it botnet activity? Create filters to restrict traffic to countries specified by you, with exclusion lists.
- Prevent data leaks over email – In some companies, outbound email does not pass through their Email Security system. Don’t let “company confidential” attachments leave the organization. Since outbound network traffic goes through your firewall, you can detect and block this “data-in-motion.”
- Prevent data leaks over web mail – Your existing anti-spam protection might detect and block a normal outbound email that contains “company confidential” information. But can it do the same if an employee uses a Web Mail service, such as Yahoo® or Gmail®, to send out “Company Confidential” information?
- Bandwidth management of streaming audio and video – Access to streaming video from sites such as YouTube.com is sometimes useful, but is often abused. Create a policy to limit streaming audio and streaming video by predefined signature list.
SonicWALL Next-Generation firewall’s high performance platform covers all the bases: deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention, application intelligence and control to deliver a comprehensive security solution with superior protection. If your firewall isn’t delivering this level of performance, protection and application control, it’s time to upgrade to a SonicWALL firewall. Ancero experts properly configure, run, and mange your firewall, and you have the ability to upgrade/exchange your firewall as your needs change, and as technology changes.