SonicWALL, Inc., the leading provider of intelligent network security and data protection solutions, today announced availability of the SonicWALL SSL VPN 5.5 firmware for the Secure Remote Access (SRA) Series. The release significantly enhances SonicWALL's market-leading SSL VPN technology with the introduction of spike licensing, which enables network administrators to quickly and automatically increase the concurrent user capacity of their remote access solution during disaster situations. With the release, SonicWALL also offers new features that continue to innovate Web Application Firewall (WAF) technology to help companies meet PCI compliance requirements and deploy outbound Data Loss Prevention (DLP) with advanced web application security. With the new offering, SonicWALL's SMB customers continue to receive strong ROI results without compromising on security and ease of use.
Spike licensing allows an increased number of licensed remote users to connect back to the corporate network in the event of an unexpected increase in demand; such as during an emergency, snowstorm, flooding or pandemic outbreaks. Offered as a 10-day license, Spike licensing can be enabled to quickly increase the number of concurrent users, allowing SMBs to limit the committed upfront investment required for user licenses.
"As a pre-kindergarten-12th grade school district, we were looking for a way to enable our teachers and administrative district staff to work remotely and securely access our network," said Tom Gawczynski, network administrator, Crete-Monee School District. "SonicWALL's SRA SSL VPN is a highly secure solution with high availability and uptime – which is absolutely essential for us. What's more, with the new spike licensing option, we never have to worry about planning for short-term peak usage scenarios – if there is ever a need to have more users log in during unexpected emergencies, it would be easy for us to handle these short duration spikes in an easy fashion. Additionally, we can pause and resume spike licensing to use it only when absolutely needed."
Further expanding the capabilities of its award-winning WAF, SonicWALL now provides the ability to scan web traffic for credit card and Social Security number information which provides increased protection to help prevent the leakage of sensitive information. Additional WAF features in SSL VPN 5.5 firmware include cookie tampering protection, PCI compliance report generation and application profiling to help achieve PCI compliance. Application profiling allows the WAF to intelligently learn about the Layer-7 traffic, and over time, detect and differentiate normal from irregular traffic. With attacks of web-based vulnerabilities on the rise, SonicWALL WAF provides advanced web security proactively minimizing breaches such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS).
The SonicWALL SRA Series offers clientless tunnel access for a variety of fixed and mobile operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, Linux, Windows Mobile, Apple iOS and Google Android. It offers Virtual Assist / Virtual Access for remote support and control as well as WAF for web application security. Using SonicWALL Secure Remote Access, SMBs benefit from granular unified policy, ActiveSync support for mobile devices, two-factor authentication including one-time-passwords (OTP), load balancing and high availability – all in an easy to manage and deployable interface. The latest firmware release enables the use of Virtual Assist to remotely support an end-customer system running Windows, MacOS or Linux.
"As workforces become increasingly mobile, employees expect the same network functionality and network access in the office and on the road. For SMBs with smaller IT budgets and staff, this poses a challenge as they lack the resources to manage complicated SSL VPNs on multiple platforms, while handling issues around PCI compliance and web based data leakage," said Patrick Sweeney, vice president of product management at SonicWALL. "Our SRA Series provides SMBs with affordable, world-class security with all the flexibility and enterprise capabilities at a low Total Cost of Ownership, thus enabling the businesses to operate as efficiently as possible."
The new SMB SSL VPN 5.5 firmware is now available for the SonicWALL SRA 1200, SRA 4200 and SRA Virtual Appliance SSL VPNs for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMB).
