New VPN firewalls for high-speed computing from 3Com

3Com introduced the H3C SecPath F-Series and H3C SecBlade VPN firewalls. Intended for enterprise edge, core, data center and high-speed computing environments, the new firewalls come in appliance and blade form factors and are currently undergoing ICSA Labs certification. They represent 3Com’s initial product announcements as part of its security strategy to deliver a Secure Network Fabric through unified, network-embedded security, including its TippingPoint intrusion prevention system (IPS).

The H3C SecPath F-Series and SecBlade VPN are virtualized firewalls that combine multi-core processors and the full feature set of the H3C Comware operating system. This results in a solution that can be managed from the Intelligent Management Center (IMC) console, reducing administrative and deployment overhead. They deliver support for real-time business-critical applications such as VoIP, video and collaboration applications.

Key features include the ability to:

• Provide enhanced stateful packet inspection firewall filtering. This allows network and security administrators to control traffic down to the individual IP address and have fine-grain control of all security services to efficiently implement desired security policies
• Create multiple zones and separate firewall instances on the same device (virtual firewalls). This allows for more granular security policies than traditional firewall devices, and traffic can be zoned among wired/wireless networks, employee/guest LANs or other network segmentation strategies
• Look inside encrypted IPsec VPN tunnels for attacks. This prevents the propagation of exploits between sites and provides protection from risks that can develop when laptop users terminate VPN connections outside of the office
• Prioritize traffic based on policies. This ensures quality of service (QoS) for business-critical applications and appropriate performance for all applications
• Block specific traffic such as Active-X and certain email attachment types, helping ensure high risk traffic is kept off the network.

The SecPath F1000 series starts at under $10,000, and the F5000-A5 starts at under $100,000. The SecBlade VPN Firewall modules start at under $25,000.