More flexibility and customisation for security platform

The FirePOWER network-based platform provides customers with a universal security architecture for Sourcefire next-generation security solutions – NGIPS, NGFW and Advanced Malware Protection. Operating from the network edge to the core, FirePOWER provides the industry’s best threat protection with proven performance and innovation that delivers enhanced contextual awareness, automated security, application control, advanced malware protection and retrospective security.

“To address today's threats, network security platforms require advanced visibility and awareness into network interactions and applications, and even the ability to offer advanced malware protection,” said John Grady, Research Manager, Security Products, IDC. “The ability of Sourcefire's FirePOWER platform to deliver this functionality as part of either an IPS or NGFW, while maintaining high performance and threat prevention, makes FirePOWER a very capable platform.”

Sourcefire’s 7000 and 8000 series appliances provide customers with superior performance scalability with throughput ranging from 50 Mbps to 40+ Gbps. The company’s newest 7115 and 7125 appliances extend this flexibility with modular connectivity options through Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) interface support, enabling the appliances to easily work within a customers’ existing network environment and allowing customers to address multiple network configurations with a single device. Sourcefire is also adding four new Network Modules to its 8000 series appliances, increasing connectivity options and port density.

FirePOWER’s performance and flexibility continues to be recognised for industry leadership. In its most recent IPS Security Value Map, NSS Labs ranked Sourcefire as the leader in security effectiveness, performance and total cost of ownership (TCO). The firm also highly rated Sourcefire’s NGFW in its 2013 NGFW Security Value Map.

David Caughtry, Director of Core Technology at COMPUTERLINKS commented: “What sets the FirePOWER™ security platform apart is its flexibility to run one or all of the Sourcefire Next-Generation security solutions - NGIPS, NGFW, or even as an Advanced Malware Protection appliance that calls on retrospective security, allowing defenders to be more effective before, during and after an attack.”

Sourcefire has also updated features of its FirePOWER security platform, including:
· Enhanced IPv6 Product and Awareness Support – Sourcefire’s NGIPS and NGFW now have even greater support for IPv6 in network discovery policies, correlation policies, whitelists, host profiles, various event viewers and the Sourcefire Defence Centre’s Context Explorer.
· Geolocation Additions to Event Analysis – To provide additional contextual awareness for events, Sourcefire enables customers to include country identification as part of its reporting capabilities. Users can see and sort contextual information such as continent, region, postal code, longitude and latitude, organisation and domain names.
· Network Address Translation (NAT) Policy Management – Simplifying the NAT configuration process, Sourcefire is providing customers the ability to define NAT policies centrally rather than on a device-by-device basis. This improves the consistency and effectiveness of an organisation’s NGIPS/NGFW implementation and eases the administrative process.
· Enhanced High-Availability Features for NGFW –Minimises disruption and continues protection in the event of a firewall device failure. The enhanced features include TCP Strict State Enforcement, Unidirectional Rules, Blocking Persistence and Dynamic Network Address Translation.
· Site-to-Site IPSec VPN – Sourcefire is extending customers’ secure communications capabilities between multiple Sourcefire-protected networks through its Virtual Private Network (VPN) based on IPSec authentication and encryption. The VPN can be deployed in a point-to-point, star or mesh topology and supports the major IPSec algorithms, ciphers and hashes for encryption and authentication.

“Organisations today consistently face a growing number of sophisticated, persistent threats to their corporate data, increasing the demand for flexible and scalable security solutions that can be customised to deliver the optimal protection for customers’ environments,” said Martin Roesch, Sourcefire founder and CTO. “With these enhancements to our FirePOWER platform, Sourcefire’s customers can rest assured that they have access to a security solution delivering continuous protection – before, during and after an attack.”