Interop: BorderWare to unify security appliances

At Interop this week, security vendor BorderWare will detail plans for integrating its new Infinity platform into its existing firewall, Session Initiation Protocol and instant-messaging security appliances.

Later this year, BorderWare plans to include Infinity with its firewall, SIP and IM appliances so customers can set policies for traffic flowing across all of these channels and manage all of these devices through a single interface, says Andrew Graydon, BorderWare CTO. The Infinity features have been integrated into BorderWare’s MXtreme 6.0 Mail security appliance, which was released last November.

BorderWare describes Infinity as a content-security platform that protects VoIP, e-mail, IM and Web traffic from threats while ensuring compliance by monitoring outbound communications. Companies can use Infinity to enforce policies, monitor, report and audit on all these different types of traffic, Graydon says.

Being able to protect communications that traverse a range of protocols, particularly SIP, in an integrated fashion sets BorderWare apart from the competition, says one analyst.

“BorderWare is fairly unique, particularly because of their inclusion of VoIP protection in the messaging-management mix,” says Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, adding that protecting SIP from threats will become more important as more enterprises implement VoIP. “I would expect to see all of the major competitors in this space offering VoIP protection in the relatively near future.”

BorderWare competes with messaging-security appliance makers, including Barracuda, CypherTrust, IronPort, Mirapoint and Symantec.

The Infinity platform includes BorderWare Security Network, a reputation service that analyzes the behavior of IP addresses sending across SMTP, HTTP, IM, FTP and SIP protocols, Graydon says, pointing out that most competitors analyze only e-mail traffic.

The network collects data about sending IP addresses from BorderWare appliances installed at customer sites and looks for patterns that indicate trouble. For example, sending out thousands of e-mails at once usually indicates spam. Using pattern and behavior detection, BorderWare Security Network can block as much as 60% of all threats before they enter the customer’s network, Graydon says.

Infinity also will let another type of appliance – such as BorderWare’s mail appliance – share capacity with the company’s IM appliance. If, for example, an organization sees an increase in mail volume, instead of purchasing an additional SMTP appliance, it could use untapped capacity on its IM appliance. This is achieved by configuring a set of devices into a single messaging security cluster that appears to be one gateway, Graydon says.

Additionally, customers can leverage the included cluster-management interface to administer the appliances, he says, saving the cost of having to acquire a dedicated system for management.

BorderWare plans to release Infinity modules for its HTTP and IM appliances this fall. MXtreme 6.0, which includes an Infinity module, is priced starting at $4,750.