Interop features array of security gear

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.

With that much capacity, the box is designed to sit between the Internet and busy data centers, authenticating users and establishing what applications users can access. Once connected, the box can direct users to as many as 250 virtual LANs.

In addition to supporting Web-based applications, it can set up Layer 3 connections with remote machines running Windows or Linux.

The device supports a feature called virtual sites, which lets users apply separate policies to up to 128 groups as if each had its own appliance to which it could be connected.

The SPX5000 costs $40,000 to $100,000, depending on configuration and the number of concurrent users it supports.

A second new Array device, this one for offloading SSL traffic from servers, also is designed for large data centers, similar to gear made by Redline Networks and NetScaler.