SAN BRUNO, Calif. - October 21, 2008 - IronPort Systems Inc., a leading provider of solutions that protect businesses against spam, viruses and malware, and now part of Cisco, today introduced one of the industry's fastest Web security appliances, capable of supporting up to 30,000 end users with a single device. Delivering up to 100 percent more speed than previous models, the new IronPort S-SeriesTM hardware platforms feature multiple processors running IronPort AsyncOSTM, which offers IronPort Web Reputation FiltersTM and multiple anti-malware scanning engines running in parallel to help eliminate performance degradation and end user latency.
Hardware upgrades to the IronPort S-Series product line include the IronPort S660TM, which is designed for large enterprise data centers and is able to support up to 30,000 users from a single box, and the IronPort S360TM, a powerful option for medium-sized enterprises of up to 10,000 end users. Additionally, the company has introduced the IronPort S160TM, which expands IronPort's comprehensive and user-friendly Web security solutions to the small and medium-sized business market.
Web traffic is expected to grow by 51 percent in 2008, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index - Forecast and Methodology, 2007-2012. This rapid growth alone will stretch network infrastructures, but compounding the problem will be the expected increase in rich Web content, which requires greater processing power and scalability to enable inspections for acceptable use policies (AUP) and security violations.
Because of this growth in Web traffic, enterprises must find a way to ensure network security while not affecting the end user's experience accessing the Web. IronPort's new, faster Web security appliances utilize multicore scanning combined with IronPort Dynamic Vectoring and StreamingTM (DVS) technology to examine potential threats with minimal or no performance degradation or end user latency. Multicore scanning distributes security tasks across all available processor cores, allowing more processing to be done in parallel to reduce latency and improve scalability.
Web security gateway appliances that are this advanced and fast improve efficiency, require the deployment of fewer boxes, and consume less power to support greener data center initiatives, all of which result in an increased return on investment. A single highly secure IronPort S-Series Web gateway can typically replace three comparable appliances from competing vendors.
Powerful Security for SMBs
In the past, solutions this powerful were reserved for the largest enterprises. But the new IronPort S160 appliance gives small businesses and remote offices the same protection as Fortune 500 companies enjoy. The IronPort S160 is a small appliance, taking up only a single rack unit, but it incorporates the same powerful Web security capabilities as other IronPort S-Series devices.
"According to a recent industry report, less than 30 percent of enterprise networks employ dedicated secure Web gateways. As a result, we believe there will be a tremendous demand for Web security appliances as Internet traffic grows and malware threats increase," said Tom Gillis, vice president of marketing at Cisco. "The expansion of the IronPort S-Series product family gives us a breadth of products that are sized and priced right to meet the needs of organizations of any size. With the ability to serve more end users with a single device, these products also help enterprises reduce power and space requirements."
"IronPort's powerful Web security appliance has enabled us to eliminate a number of devices we have to maintain in the data center, which helps us save space and reduces costs for electricity and IT management," said Russell Graham, network services manager at Wesley College in Australia.
