15 August 2017 – WatchGuard® Technologies has announced hardware upgrades to its Firebox® M Series to handle the rapid proliferation of encrypted web traffic and offer more flexibility. With the new M470, M570 and M670 appliances, users can add additional network modules to increase the number of copper or fibre ports available to support the growing use of 10G fibre in midsize enterprise data centres. The new Firebox M Series appliances also enable users to inspect encrypted traffic with industry-leading performance with all security services enabled. According to Miercom, an independent testing lab, the updated Firebox M370 performs full HTTPS inspection 94% faster than competing solutions.

Network defences that don’t adequately process and inspect encrypted traffic leave employees, customers and partners vulnerable to cyber attacks. According to a 2016 Ponemon study, 41 percent of attacks in 2016 used encryption to disguise their entry into the network or hide their connection to a Command and Control server. NSS Labs, Inc. forecasts that as adoption rates continue to climb, 75 percent of web traffic will be encrypted by 2019. A firewall that lacks the processing power necessary to inspect high volumes of encrypted traffic will need to turn off some security services or compromise throughput in order to manage the burden.

KEY FEATURES:

• Dramatically Improved Performance: As validated by Miercom, the new Firebox M Series offers approximately three times the performance of competing products.
• Flexibility Through Increased Port Density: All new appliances (except the M370) have an expansion slot for additional ports. 4x10Gb fibre, 8x1Gb copper or 8x1Gb fibre network modules are available as well.
• Intel processors with AES-NI and CaveCreek crypto acceleration: New chipsets allow the new M Series appliances industry-leading performance in HTTPS content inspection and fast processing of traffic even with all security services enabled.

Brendan Patterson, Director of Product Management at WatchGuard Technologies, said, “As adoption rates for encryption continue to climb, organizations need to know that their UTM offers performance levels that can process the growing torrent of encrypted traffic and the security services capable of detecting threats that might be lurking within that traffic. With the new M Series, we offer dramatic improvements in throughput to ensure our customers don’t have to choose between performance and security.”

Robert Smithers, CEO, Miercom added, “Based on results of our testing, the WatchGuard Firebox M370 displayed exceptional performance, outperforming its competitors for stateless and stateful traffic throughput scenarios. Its high-rate, non-degrading performance with security features enabled earns it the Miercom Performance Verified certification.”