McAfee Announces McAfee Firewall Enterprise Version 8

What is McAfee Firewall Enterprise Version 8?

V8 is the most advanced next generation firewall in the industry. It performs deep inspection of network traffic in addition to blocking attacks, giving users visibility into application traffic, including inbound and outbound encrypted traffic. It allows inspection of SSH, SFTP and HTTPS traffic for malicious content. V8 also allows policy enforcement relative to inbound and outbound activities at the user level. This allows creation of precise, accurate application rules based on the user groups that already exist in an organisation's Active Directory or LDAP directory.

So What's the Problem?

All this might sound a bit techie, so you may be wondering why these advances are necessary and what problems they solve. Simple. Exponential growth in network enabled application in corporate environments and the broad, fast-changing attack surface of Web 2.0 necessitate a new approach to firewall security. With the non-stop arrival of mobile and Web 2.0 applications in recent years, defining the network perimeter has become much more difficult. Security teams are scrambling to defend their organisations' data assets as they embrace these new applications.

Conventional firewalls simply cannot tell the difference between an enterprise application like CRM from an electronic billing system or an internal Web-based collaboration tool. This makes it very difficult to enforce security policy on an application-specific basis, which has to be done not only for compliance but often for internal reasons as well.

Advances in firewall technology simply have not kept pace with the sophisticated threats that hackers and other cyber criminals are now directing at organisations. Users have responded by throwing more and more boxes at the problem, which is an expensive, inefficient and usually ineffective approach.

Take it from Gartner: "Firewalls need to evolve to be more proactive in blocking new threats, such as botnets and targeted attacks. Enterprises need to update their network firewall and intrusion prevention capabilities to protect business systems as attacks get more sophisticated."

Thus, V8

McAfee addresses these problems head-on with McAfee Firewall Enterprise Version 8. Three McAfee innovations deliver unprecedented protection. To improve network security while reducing effort and expense, we combine:

• Full application visibility and control
• Identity-aware policy enforcement
• Global threat intelligence-based attack protection

Firewall Enterprise Version 8 users confidently discover, control, visualise and protect new and existing applications using visual analytics and user identity for efficient, effective rules and to detect complex threats within these applications, Firewall Enterprise Version 8 combines proactive threat intelligence with multiple inspection technologies in one cost-effective, easy-to-manage appliance.

The McAfee Firewall Enterprise Product Line

McAfee Firewall Enterprise Version 8 comes in appliances appropriate for businesses of all sizes, as do companion products such as McAfee Firewall Profiler, McAfee Firewall Enterprise Control Center and McAfee Firewall Reporter. These products work together to streamline management activities and reduce operational costs. Flexible, hybrid delivery options include physical appliances, multi-firewall appliances, virtual appliances and appliances for rugged-use environments.

find out more

For more information, contact your Phoenix Account Manager on 0845 265 1265 or email info@phoenixs.co.uk