Security giant McAfee has updated its enterprise firewall portfolio to include the visibility, recognition and policy enforcement of many applications that the firm claims are invisible to traditional firewall platforms.
McAfee Firewall Enterprise version 8 integrates the firm’s cloud-based threat detection technology to offer security admins clearer visibility into potential risks and vulnerabilities both externally and within a company’s walls. The company said that this should help reduce compliance and operational costs.
The changes have been driven by the increase in Web 2.0 tools, which McAfee says are creating new threats and policy and compliance issues regarding application visibility and control.
McAfee claims that traditional firewall technologies don’t effectively manage or enforce policy within an organisation as they cannot adequately keep up with the volume of threats or the changing application environments.
Firewall Enterprise version 8 integrates McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, which the company says will streamline management. “The release of our next generation firewall is intended to disrupt a stagnant firewall market that has failed to keep pace with the threat landscape. Last generation firewalls don’t effectively enforce relevant business policies and are simply too hard and expensive to manage,” said Dan Ryan, executive vice president and general manager of the Network Security business unit at McAfee.
It will be available in traditional appliance form factors, in a new virtualised hardware appliance and as a software-based firewall virtual appliance, McAfee said. Prices start from $1,500 and it should be available from this quarter.
McAfee has also release Firewall Profiler – which pinpoints in real-time how firewall rules and rule changes impact application availability, usage and security, the company said. It should reduce troubleshooting and rule creation deployment time.
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Prices for the Firewall Profiler platform start at $9,750.
