Next-Generation Firewalls Benefit from Local Management
Austin, Texas (PRWEB) September 24, 2013 -- HP announced its Next-Generation Firewall line last week, joining Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Check Point in the evolving world of firewalls that blend traditional port-based controls with application controls and intrusion prevention. Uplogix founder and Chief Technologist James Dollar says that as firewall features expand to deal with increasing threats, firewall management remains a key concern.
To provide secure device management automation and reduce operational expenses without sacrificing uptime, said Dollar, you have to take the management interface for the firewall out of the network path, which reduces potential exploits of the firewall through denial of service or intrusion.
"Even though firewalls and IPS devices are merging into what’s being called Next-Generation Firewalls, many of the same management issues remain," said James Dollar, Uplogix founder and CTO. "The Uplogix proposition of securely managing remote devices through Local Management is only growing stronger as the security stakes rise higher."
Local Management from Uplogix provides secure device access by maintaining and enforcing AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) regardless of the state of the network; granular, role-based permissioning; logging and compliance reporting; and session management. These features help to securely manage firewalls and other devices remotely, saving both response time and physical security by allowing exports to support distributed networks from a central location.
For key players in the firewall market, like Cisco and Juniper, Uplogix has advanced capabilities that support device configuration management by allowing administrators to stage configurations locally, and by providing a built-in safety net, SurgicalRollback, that can quickly recover and minimize the impact of a failed configuration change. With configuration issues commonly regarded as the cause of upwards of 60% of network downtime, providing firewall administrators with backup is crucial for maintaining overall network security.
Going beyond secure administration, Local Management provides high-resolution out-of-band monitoring that pulls detailed device information as well as that of other managed devices in the stack, regardless of the state of the network. This allows for a more holistic viewpoint and means that even if there are network problems that would foil SNMP polling and attempts at remote troubleshooting, Uplogix is able to continue monitoring of network security devices over a direct connection.
Security is one of the key features of Uplogix Local Management, whether applied to security devices such as firewalls, or other network devices like routers and switches. Deployed in some of the most secure networks in the defense and financial industries, Uplogix is proven in security. For more information on Uplogix secure administration for critical network security devices, please visit Uplogix.com.
Billy Moran, Uplogix, Inc., http://www.uplogix.com, +1 (512) 857-7080, [email protected]
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