* Foundry Networks’ SecureIron products
Foundry Networks this week unveiled a series of LAN switches focused on security, protecting against network- and application-level attacks.
The new devices are meant to complement firewall and security systems that enterprise companies already have in place, Foundry says.
The SecureIronLS series of secure LAN switches brings security functions closer to the desktop and to the server. The switches come in several different configurations, some with 10/100M bit/sec ports and some with Gigabit Ethernet ports and 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks.
Foundry also introduced the SecureIron Security Traffic Manager line of products. These can be used as front ends to firewalls, the company says. They offload network address translation and protect against well-known denial-of-service attacks.
Both lines of products are able to forward packets at wire speed. They use a multi-processor security engine to inspect packets, and the engine can do so at rates ranging from 500M bit/sec to 3G bit/sec.
The deep packet inspection allows SecureIron to protect against intrusions. Traffic flows are inspected in both directions.
The devices can defend against ICMP, UDP and IP fragmentation attacks, as well as denial-of-service attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in TCP/IP protocol stacks, Foundry says.
The devices can even block spam from known spammers.
The news is timely, as many of Foundry’s competitors are focusing on security in their LAN products. And security remains top-of-mind for users, as shown in our recent survey:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/062705-nw500.html
Foundry offers the IronView Security Manager software to coordinate defenses among the switches when an attack is detected. The traffic flow, user, or network segment originating a threat can be shut down.
The SecureIronLS line starts at $15,000 and the SecureIron Traffic Manager line starts at $13,000.
