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, having gained the IP line through the acquisition of Nokia’s security appliance business in April 2009. (2/22/2010)

Cisco ASA 5500 Series
Version 8.2 of Cisco’s ASA-5500 series software adds botnet traffic filtering, broadens support for IP V6 and adds next-generation tunneling and session persistence using Cisco AnyConnect Essentials. (7/15/2009)

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. The company continues to expand a broad appliance portfolio. (2/22/2010)

Juniper Networks SRX5000 Line
Juniper’s new SRX5000 family of security services gateways deliver absolutely screaming firewall performance but it is going to take a little while until all the pieces work seamlessly together. (7/14/2009)

Juniper Networks SSG Security Appliance
Juniper’s SSG 140 and the 300 and 500 series combine the best features of the Netscreen firewall/VPN line with advanced routing and UTM capability. The 300 and 500 series offer scalable solutions for branch office to enterprise implementations. (5/14/2008)

Nortel VPN Router Family
Nortel sold its Enterprise Solutions Business to Avaya in December 2009. Avaya is committed to maintaining the VPN Router appliance, but the product family has not had a significant refresh in quite some time. (2/22/2010)

WatchGuard Technologies Firebox X Peak
The Firebox X Peak family of products sits comfortably in the middle of WatchGuard’s growing portfolio of security appliances, leveraging WatchGuard’s enterprise-class XTM Pro operating system and an expanding suite of threat management options. (2/22/2010)

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Report Contents

• Current Perspective Rating
• Product Strengths & Weaknesses
• Product Buying Criteria
• Product Metrics

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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.

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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