Jon’s Network

Whenever I learn about a new UTM device (or next generation firewall, secure network gateway, etc.), I’m amazed that there is yet another one. Some of these are well known, but others I’ve never seen in the wild. How many of these companies are making money right now? Here is a first stab [...]

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Avi Baumstein reviews Palo Alto’s PA-4050 in InformationWeek:

The device precisely identified applications, particularly various types of Web traffic, and enabled us to quickly and granularly control usage; for example, we could allow access to Google search and read but block Google Mail and video.

Other highlights:

SSL Proxy Active Directory integration

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When I found out that Fortinet and Riverbed were forming an alliance to “uniquely” address security and acceleration, I immediately thought of Blue Coat, who has been taking this WAN-optimization and security approach for about two years now. The Fortinet/Riverbed alliance just validates the Blue Coat approach in my eyes. If you watch [...]

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Prediction: Fortinet will have SSL inspection on their Fortigate line of products within 12 months. Why? Because their new competition, Palo Alto Networks, has it and Fortinet will need to add it or get kicked to the curb.

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Many vendors promote their "purpose-built" appliances and closed software as a value to the customer.  These vendors have the "plug and play" advantage and you can "set it and forget it".

I haven’t been in the industry very long (5 years), but I imagine this appliance trend caught on after Cisco began producing purpose-built routers [...]

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Fortinet’s Fortigate firewall is now ICSA certified for network intrusion prevention.  That makes 5 ICSA certs including:  firewalls, antivirus, network intrusion prevention, IPSec VPN and SSL VPN.  You can read the press release here.   

If you are interested in learning more about the Fortinet strategy there is a whitepaper about consolidating mature solutions that are often [...]

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