Offered at a price point tailored for SMEs, Dell’s new SonicWALL TZ Series firewalls supports faster internet speeds, analyses encrypted SSL traffic and features an integrated wireless controller.

Responding to the security demands of ever increasing network traffic, the firewall is built around multi-core security processors to create, what Dell claim, is the highest performance desktop form-factor Unified Threat Management (UTM) firewall on the market, boasting intrusion prevention speeds reaching up to 1.1Gbps.

The secure wireless controller integrated in the SonicWALL TZ Series supports the high-speed 802.11ac wireless standard which, when combined with the recently launched 802.11ac-capable Dell SonicPoints, offers wireless security for both small businesses and large distributed enterprises.

With SMEs benefiting from the tailored price point, larger business will also benefit from the series’ distributed enterprise feature set.

The TZ leverages the Dell SonicWALL Global Management System (GMS) to manage thousands of distributed TZ firewalls, enabling simple management of its Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) feature set, including application control, application visualization, comprehensive reporting and IPS.

The recent 2015 Dell Security Annual Threat Report highlights the importance of a product like the SonicWALL TZ Series. The report found that 60% of internet connections at the end of 2014 were encrypted using SSL. Disturbingly, with the growth of legitimate SSL traffic, cyber-criminals also have begun to hide their attacks from legacy network security products within SSL traffic.

Patrick Sweeney, executive director at Dell Network Security, said: "Sadly, technology designed to protect our information is being used to penetrate networks. Encryption should be a great tool, but used by the wrong people, it becomes a weapon against us.

"The new TZs give small networks and small business locations the vital big enterprise capability of scanning encrypted traffic to ferret out malicious traffic and attacks. The new TZs provide this security without breaking the bank and without bringing the network to its knees."