A host of security vendors are set to roll out everything from intrusion-prevention gear to SSL VPN equipment at Interop this week.

This focus on securing networks is not surprising considering that 59% of respondents to the most recent Network World survey say they plan to spend more on security than they did last year, and Interop is a place to shop.

RadWare, Array Networks, Fortinet and NeoAccel will demonstrate products at the show.

RadWare will launch its DefensePro 100 security appliance for adding intrusion-prevention system (IPS ) and bandwidth management capabilities to corporate branch offices. The device, which supports up to 100M bit/sec scanning throughput, is a smaller version of RadWare's 3G bit/sec DefensePro 300 and 200 series switches, used in ISPs and large corporate networks.

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The DefensePro 100 sits between a WAN router link and a LAN inside a branch office. It scans all incoming and outgoing traffic for more than 1,500 virus, worm and Trojan signatures. Malicious traffic can be dropped or re-directed to a secure quarantine segment of a LAN, according to RadWare.

The device also can detect irregular network traffic patterns, the vendor says. Such patterns that might be part of a new type of network attack can be handled in several ways, RadWare says: Bandwidth for the suspicious packet flow can be squeezed to a trickle, so as not to congest a network pipe; the flow can be mirrored to an administrative PC for forensic inspection; or traffic can be dropped.

The DefensePro 100 also can identify and legitimatize application flows traveling between a branch and main office, such as ERP, e-mail or CRM application streams. The device can be configured to guarantee a specified amount of bandwidth for these applications, even if a WAN pipe is being flooded with traffic from a network attack or worm or broadcast storms from misconfigured network equipment or applications. This is similar to features in products from Packeteer, Peribit and others.

The DefensePro 100 costs $15,000, with virus/worm signature update services costing between $2,000 and $3,000 per year.

Moving in from the branch office to data centers, Array will introduce a VPN box called the SPX5000 that supports up to 64,000 concurrent users connecting via SSL.