New security appliance, firewall capabilities are among many products rolled out

Tim Wilson, Editor in Chief, Dark Reading, Contributor

October 5, 2010

3 Min Read

If the boundaries between being at work and being at home are slowly dissolving, then where do companies put their security?

Cisco Tuesday unveiled new products and services designed to advance its answer to that question: the Cisco Borderless Network architecture.

"Recently we've seen a revolution in what it means to be at work," says Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security Technology business unit. "The delineations betweeen being at the office and being at home have dissolved -- this shift will drive generations of productivity."

At the security level, the shift will mean less reliance on where people are -- including IP addresses and network locations -- and more emphasis on who the user is and what applications he uses, Gillis says. And each device on the network will be more likely to touch the Internet than ever, he predicts.

To address these shifts, Cisco announced enhancements to many of the products that make up the Borderless Network architecture. The company unveiled its highest-performing and high-density Cisco Catalyst switch; a new Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance firewall; a compact Cisco ASR 1000 Series router; new entry-level 802.11n wireless access points for smaller businesses; and new and enhanced smart-services offerings.

Additionally, Cisco announced the Application Velocity Network Service, a new network service that accelerates application performance physically and virtually.

Here's how Cisco described the new products:

  • The Cisco Catalyst 4500 E-Series switch delivers 848 Gbps of system bandwidth and the highest density of 384 Power over Ethernet Plus (PoEP)-capable ports. It comes loaded with hardware-accelerated Borderless Network Services like Cisco Medianet, Cisco EnergyWise, and Cisco TrustSec.

    • The Cisco ASA 5585-X Adaptive Security Appliance delivers high performance in a compact, two-rack-unit form factor. The ASA 5585-X provides new levels of speed and scale, supporting 20 Gbps of multiprotocol throughput and 35Gbps of large packet throughput of maximum firewall performance, 10,000 VPN connections, 350,000 connections per second and 8 million total connections, along with industry-leading threat defense from Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and always-on remote access using Cisco AnyConnect.

    • The Cisco ASR 1001 router delivers up to 5 Gbps performance throughput.

    • The Cisco Aironet 1040 Series Access Point expands Cisco’s mobility portfolio and accelerates the adoption of 802.11n by providing enterprise performance with an entry-level price, Cisco says.

    • Cisco AnyConnect 3.0 further expands network endpoint capabilities with new IPsec IKEv2 support in addition to Secure Sockets Layer and Datagram Transport Layer Security, an integrated 802.1X supplicant, and 802.1AE MACSec support. This new release of AnyConnect also supports hybrid secure mobility deployments by extending protection to mobile workers through ScanSafe cloud security services.

    • SBA Enterprise, a series of prescriptive blueprints to help simplify a phased approach to planning and deployment, lets customers with up to 10,000 connected devices deploy Borderless Networks using Cisco tested and validated solutions.

    • CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution 4.0 provides a comprehensive and fully integrated management tool with intuitive work centers to automate workflows and ease deployment for Borderless Network services, such as Cisco EnergyWise and Cisco TrustSec, in addition to simplifying monitoring and troubleshooting the network.

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About the Author(s)

Tim Wilson, Editor in Chief, Dark Reading

Contributor

Tim Wilson is Editor in Chief and co-founder of Dark Reading.com, UBM Tech's online community for information security professionals. He is responsible for managing the site, assigning and editing content, and writing breaking news stories. Wilson has been recognized as one of the top cyber security journalists in the US in voting among his peers, conducted by the SANS Institute. In 2011 he was named one of the 50 Most Powerful Voices in Security by SYS-CON Media.

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