BIOS: Technology Means Business

SonicWALL's newest entry expands the company's offerings in the content security space. The Content Security Manager 2100 CF is a 1U rack-mountable (431x254x445mm, 3.86kg) Web content filtering solution designed for small and midsize organisations looking to enhance their network security and employee productivity by restricting Web sites their users can access. Designed to allow you to control access to Web sites known to drain both bandwidth and waste employee time, such as Instant Messaging (IM) and peer-to-peer (P2P), the appliance can even sit behind other third party gateways. On-board dynamic rating architecture provides real-time rating of unrated Web sites and domains, policy controls let you lock down Internet access, and smart URL parsing filters cached content provided by various search engines. Active Directory integration allows for single sign-on and transparent user authentication, intelligent transparent bridging lets you integrate the solution into virtually any types of network, and usage reports provide you with detailed cost analysis tools.

Pros: Supports custom filtering; manage IM and peer-to-peer usage
Cons: No built-in firewall/VPN

Release: SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL) has announced its new Content Security Manager 2100 CF, a full-featured content filtering solution in an easily-managed appliance that is competitively priced and suitable for organisations of all sizes. The Content Security Manager 2100 CF enhances network security and employee productivity, optimises network utilisation and manages access to over 55 unique categories of Internet content as well as the use of instant messaging, peer-to-peer and multimedia applications. This functionality enables network administrators to quickly improve productivity by controlling access to sites known to drain both bandwidth and waste employee time.

The Content Security Manager 2100 CF requires minimal configuration, set-up or administrative overhead, while incorporating the most-needed features and reporting capabilities of higher-end solutions. The appliance provides a full range of capabilities at a much more affordable price than comparable offerings and can sit behind a SonicWALL or any third-party firewall, allowing a new class of organisation to reap the productivity benefits typically enjoyed by larger enterprises. New features include an onboard dynamic rating engine enables users to obtain real-time ratings for new, unrated URLs. It can implement flexible time-of-day features that allow access to certain categories only, at set times in the day, and policies can be managed centrally using SonicWALL's Global Management System.

'SonicWALL's expertise and success in the content filtering arena is well established through the service we integrate on our firewalls,' said Matthew Medeiros, president and chief executive officer of SonicWALL. 'Now we are introducing a powerful, standalone content filtering appliance that can sit behind other third party gateways, such as Cisco. This means that an organisation of any size can afford to deploy robust content filtering without the need for infrastructure change, and can realise enhanced productivity and security benefits previously available only to enterprise users.'

Distractions of all kinds are challenging workers for their attention courtesy of the Internet. According to a recently-released study by Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc., fantasy football teams alone cost businesses over $35 million per day. Additionally, the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) and instant messenger (IM) applications is a growing concern in schools and businesses, as Internet threats exploit the open exchange of data made possible by these technologies. Nearly 85% of enterprises worldwide use IM applications, but recent studies (Radicati 2003, SonicWALL/Cerberian 2004) indicate that 20 per cent of IT managers are actively seeking ways of blocking the use of IM services at work to reduce exposure to vulnerabilities. The Content Security Manager2100 CF includes the application and protocol filtering capabilities of SonicWALL's deep packet inspection intrusion prevention technology, enabling users to block the downloading of P2P, IM or multimedia applications.

'We believe SonicWALL is entering this market at the right time,' said Brian Burke, senior analyst at IDC. 'Appliances are a hot commodity because of their ease of use and, while enterprises are well-served in content filtering, there is a huge opportunity in small and medium businesses, especially for a well-known vendor such as SonicWALL.'

'The role of content filtering has evolved to include important elements of security, bandwidth preservation and worker productivity,' said Mark Carver, business development director at Fairbridge Communications, a SonicWALL Gold Medallion partner. 'Our customers understand these benefits and are looking for cost effective solutions that are simple to install and manage. SonicWALL's new content filtering appliance provides the most important URL controls of traditional enterprise filtering products but with a greater range of security features including strong Instant Messaging and Peer-to-Peer controls. Significantly better price points than are common for this class of product, together with maintaining SonicWALL's traditional ease of installation and ongoing management, make this new appliance a winner.'