Symantec launches second generation Gateway series

Security vendor, Symantec, has announced a family of all-in-one appliances that will give customers a variety of ways to beef up security without adding multiple devices to their networks.

The Symantec Gateway Security Appliance 5400 models combine an Internet gateway firewall, antivirus, Web filtering, anti-spam and intrusion-detection and intrusion-prevention technology to support from 65,000 simultaneous user connections on the 200Mbps speed Model 5420 to more than 200,000 on the Model 5460, which reaches 1.8Gbps.

The 5400 line is intended to replace Symantec’s year-old 100Mbps Gateway Security Appliance, the vendor’s first multi-function gateway that lacked the ManHunt-technology intrusion-detection system/intrusion-prevention technology that Symantec acquired when it purchased Recourse Technologies.

Attached to the corporate LAN at the Internet’s perimeter, the Symantec multi-function gateways play the role of the firewall, while also blocking employee access to unauthorised websites, stopping spam and checking for possible computer viruses. With ManHunt technology, the Symantec gateway could be set up to monitor as a passive IDS or actively block specified attacks.

All three Gateway Security Appliances can report event activity to the Web-based Symantec management console, and customers can now design their own policy-configuration management templates for remotely configuring settings at the gateway, according to Symantec’s group product manager, Howard Lev.

The older gateway appliance was limited to Microsoft Management System.

Although multi-function gateways are still fairly new and raise the possibility of a single point of failure unless carefully set up with load balancing and failover, some network managers are keen to buy them because they might be able to simplify security monitoring and management.

Lev said the new Gateway Security Appliance line came with its own event-logging, reporting and alerting tools.

The 5400 multi-function security appliance line was sold as a firewall in its most basic form, and customers could purchase anti-spam, anti-virus and other functions separately, he said.