Firewalls and VPNs

Product Assessment reports from Current Analysis provide a timely and in-depth evaluation on how leading products and services in a market measure up to their competition. Updated regularly by our industry-leading analysts, the reports deliver an objective and un-biased look at a product's strengths and weaknesses, ratings on how well the product meets specific customer buying criteria, and relevant product metrics. Compare selected products with side-by-side listings of product metrics and other factors, with a focus on actionable intelligence.

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Check Point IP Series of Appliances

Check Point remains committed to maintaining the IP Series appliance line. The company now carries three separate appliance classes. The IP line hardware came through the acquisition of Nokia’s security appliance business in April 2009. (7/15/2011)

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Cisco ASA 5500 Series

Cisco did not have any major firewall announcements in the first half of 2011, the company continues to roll out its new high end 5585-X boxes, which were announced late in 2010. (7/15/2011)

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Fortinet FortiGate Security Appliances

Fortinet continues its leadership in unified threat management, focusing on inspection techniques that blur the lines between firewall, IPS and active threat defense. (7/15/2011)

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Juniper Networks SRX Family

Juniper has made good progress in extending the capabilities of the SRX family through integration with vGW virtual gateway, and extension of the AppSecure suite from the branch to the data center SRX products. (7/15/2011)

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McAfee Firewall Enterprise

McAfee’s Firewall Enterprise products did not have a significant update in the first half of 2011. (7/15/2011)

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Top

• Current Analysis Perspective
• Product Strengths & Weaknesses
• Product Point and Counterpoint
• Product Buying Criteria
• Product Metrics

Firewall and VPN Buying Criteria

• Total Cost of Ownership
  • A measure of the factors that affect the cost of a device over its entire useful life, including licensing, support contracts, training, support software, and other factors (TCO).
• Scalability
  • Scalability measures the performance and capacity of the security device based on key industry metrics including concurrent sessions, setup/teardown rate per second, and encryption and inspection performance, but also ranks solution breadth, clustering technologies, and architecture.
• Management
  • Firewalls and VPNs are often distributed across multiple geographies. Centralized reporting and management reigns in the cost of remotely administering users and networks.
• Encryption
  • The encryption metric specifically ranks each product based on its stated encryption capabilities and the platform's ability to deliver that encryption at speeds at or near the rated capacity of the device.
• Depth of Defense
  • Firewall/VPN and unified threat management devices are converging into a single product category in the enterprise branch and enterprise mid-market segments. Depth of Defense ranks each product based on the sophistication of its access and inspection features.

Firewall and VPN Product Metrics

• General Information
  • Product Functionality
• Device Specific Information
  • Interface Count
  • Interface Types
  • Redundant Power Supplies
  • NEBS Compliance
  • Remote/Out of Band Management
  • High Availability Port
  • Routing Protocols
  • Product Warranty
  • 802.1Q VLAN Tagging
  • Latest Shipping Software
• VPN Specific Information
  • Maximum Concurrent Connections
  • 3DES Performance
  • 3DES Accelerated Performance
  • Encryption Algorithms
  • Network Integration
  • Industry Certifications
  • Tunneling Protocols
  • CAs Supported
  • Key Management
  • CA Revocation Methods
  • High Availability Features
  • VPN Architecture
  • AES Performance
  • NAT Traversal
  • SSL VPN Tunneling Features
  • SSL VPN Translation Features
  • SSL VPN Browser Support
• VPN Client Information
  • Client Name
  • Client Status
  • OS Support
  • Authentication Methods
  • Split Tunnel Support
  • Client Lock-Out
  • Personal Firewall
  • Personal Firewall Configuration
  • Remote Management
  • Client Config Check
  • Client Failover
• Firewall Features
  • Firewall Type
  • Address Translation
  • High Availability Sessions
  • Load Balancing
  • Protocol Support
  • Firewall Architecture
  • Virtual Firewalling
• Management Features
  • Management Station
  • Management OS Support
  • Management Devices Supported
  • Management Client Support
  • Logging Options
  • NMS Integration
  • Policy Based Configuration
  • Management Security
• Value Added Features
  • Denial of Service Protection
  • IDS Intelligence
  • Anti-Virus Scanning
  • Content Filtering
• Pricing
  • Solution Hardware Pricing
  • Add-on Hardware
  • Software Licenses
  • VPN Client Pricing
  • Solution Description & Restrictions
• Support/Maintenance
  • Hardware Maintenance Costs
  • Maintenance Include S/W Updates
  • Software ONLY Maintenance Cost
• Product Class Ratings
  • Total Cost of Ownership
  • Scalability
  • Management
  • Encryption
  • Depth of Defense