New Barracuda Next-Generation Firewalls Target Small Businesses

Barracuda Networks said its latest next-generation firewalls are designed for smaller organizations facing sophisticated security threats with limited IT resources. The company also released new firmware that aims to simplify setup and network configuration.

The Barracuda Firewall X100 and X101 appliances both include 4x GbE copper ports. As with the company’s other firewalls, the X100 series can apply URL filtering provided by the Barracuda Web Security Service subscription to websites accessed via HTTPS and administrators can exempt user-defined domains or IP addresses from being forwarded to the service.

In addition to improved setup wizards, Version 6.1 of the firmware now supports secure remote access through an integrated SSL VPN, which can be used to grant remote users access to web applications, client and server applications, as well as internal network resources such as Outlook Web Access, and SharePoint.

In its 2013 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Firewalls, Gartner placed Barracuda in the crowded niche players corner, which includes Dell SonicWall, Sophos and McAfee, and categorized Check Point Software and Palo Alto Networks as leaders.

In a recent IDC report, “Augmenting Next-Generation Firewalls,” IDC research manager John Grady said the adoption of next-gen firewalls in organizations of all sizes has been driven by two concerns: more complex, targeted and persistent security threats, and the increasing ease with which employees can inadvertently disclose company information through social media.

[Confused about what to look for in next-generation firewalls? Get some guidance from security experts in "4 Tips for Evaluating Next-Generation Firewalls."]

“Traditional firewalls that enforce policy by port and protocol do not have the ability to see the specific Web application traffic entering the network and thus do not have the ability to filter that traffic," he wrote.

Next-generation firewalls address this problem by adding application classification and control as an integral feature of the platform, according to Grady.

Barracuda Firewall version 6.1 is available now at no charge to customers with an active Energize Updates subscription. List price for the appliance starts at $999 and $179 for Energize Updates.

SolarWinds Monitors Cisco Call Quality

SolarWinds is adding the ability to monitor Cisco VoIP to its VoIP and Network Quality Manager as well as better integration with the latest version of its Network Performance Monitor (NPM).

The new Cisco capabilities in VoIP & Network Quality Manager can identify the top 10 quality issues for all calls in a designated gateway by monitoring Cisco MGCP VoIP gateway details, including primary rate interface trunk utilization, while the integration with NPM is designed to provide better visibility of VoIP node details. Other features in the updated product include: the ability to correlate call issues with WAN performance; monitor QoS metrics such as jitter, latency and packet loss; monitor site-to-site WAN performance using Cisco IP SLA technology; and, automatically discover Cisco IP SLA-enabled network devices.

SolarWinds recently added new network route and multicast monitoring capabilities to NPM, allowing IT administrators to view routing tables, changes in default routes, BPG transitions and flapping routes using a Web-based console.

FlowTraq Moves Network Monitoring To The Cloud

FlowTraq is now supplying its network security and management software in a hosted model with the introduction of FlowTraq Cloud, which the company said store an enterprise’s network traffic securely. Customers can track application use and monitor network performance and bandwidth consumption in a pay-per-use model.

Features include a flow record summary of network communication containing details on endpoints, service and duration, as well as support for common flow formats such as NetFlow, jFlow, CFlow, sFlow and IPFIX. Enterprises can either transmit their flow data directly to the FlowTraq Cloud or install the company FlowProxy locally in their networks to securely transmit all their flow records to the FlowTraq Cloud. Customer flows within FlowTraq cloud are kept secure and separate from other users.

FlowTraq is not the only vendor to offer network traffic monitoring via the cloud: ASCI, for example, provides cloud-based network monitoring with its Network Monitoring Center using NetFlow v9, IPFIX and JFlow traffic data.

Stratalux Puts Log Management On AWS

Stratalux has released a Logstash-based log management service in the AWS Marketplace. It includes the Logstash server, Kibana Web interface, ElasticSearch storage and Redis data structure server.

Stratalux’s Logstash on AWS is available in two models: community and standard. Community customers have access to the open source community for support through forums and IRC, while the standard model provides support to customers via email during business hours. Users can also create customized dashboards to view their infrastructures.

Logstash itself is fully free and open source with an Apache 2.0 license. It pulls together logs from across an IT infrastructure and features searching and graphing. Logstash can parse text-based logs to support querying for more precise items, such as all 404 HTTP errors and mail server faults.

Can security coexist with operational efficiency? Find out how to align network segmentation with an organizational data classification matrix in security architect Michele Chubirka's session Beware the Firewall, My Son! The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch! at Interop New York in October.