7 Hot New Network Security Technology Products

Network Security Technology On Tap For The Enterprise

In November, analyst firm IDC predicted the sun would shine on the network security technology market this year, to the tune of $8.16 billion in revenues. Whether vendors hit that mark remains to be seen, but the past few months have seen no shortage of network security technologies aimed at protecting corporate networks. Among the challenges -- unifying management across a distributed workforce increasingly using mobile devices and boosting data protection and monitoring in virtual environments.

From Juniper Networks to McAfee, vendors have their eye on offering security resellers new solutions to pitch to customers looking to secure their organizations. In this slideshow, we take a look at some of the latest network security technologies and announcements shaping the market.

McAfee Bolters Network Security Platform

McAfee recently announced enhancements to its Network Security Platform. The security company’s latest release includes virtual network inspection technology to enable the platform sensors to examine traffic between virtual machines and detect attacks against virtual data center environments. McAfee also enhanced its reputation-based capabilities to fight botnets, and added traffic redirection capabilities to allow arbitrary network traffic to be inspected by McAfee and third-party products.

Cisco SecureX framework

Pictured here is one of the Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances. At the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Cisco announced it would be bringing context-aware firewalling and policy enforcement to these appliances. The capabilities are part of what Cisco calls its SecureX Architecture, which also encompasses pieces like Cisco AnyConnect and extensible APIs (application programming interfaces) that permit Cisco's management systems and partners to plug in to complete the security ecosystem. The context-aware capabilities will be added to the Cisco ASA 5500 Series this summer.

CheckPoint Adds New Blades

Check Point R75 was released in February, and offers four software blades: Application Control, Identity Awareness, Data Loss Prevention and Mobile access. The Application Control Software Blade was brand new in the release, and integrates Check Point’s UserCheck technology to ’engage employees in the remediation process’ and leverages the Check Point AppWiki, which includes more than 100,000 Web 2.0 application and widgets. The Identity Awareness blade is also brand new, and allows organizations to create policies based on identity.

Juniper Networks Looks To Unify Network Access

Juniper Networks announced the availability of its MAG Series Junos Pulse Gateways April 13. Offered in four models, the Juniper Networks MAG Series Junos Pulse Gateways deliver SSL VPN connectivity and network access control (NAC) capabilities.

PacketMotion Eyes Virtual Networks

PacketMotion released the PacketSentry Virtual Probe to help organizations monitor access to data in VMware clusters and secure and audit communications between virtual machines (VMs). PacketSentry Virtual Probe is delivered as a guest VM. Among the applications monitored are databases, fileshares and Web applications.

Fortinet Targets the Data Center

The FortiGate-3140B security appliance is aimed at large enterprises and their data centers. The appliance offers a total of 22 ports, and can be deployed either as a firewall or unified threat management solution configured to support VPN, IPS, application control, anti-spam and antivirus.

Palo Alto Networks Pushes Performance

With the PA-5000 Series, Palo Alto Networks put an emphasis on performance, targeting the devices at enterprise data centers. The appliances have the ability to handle up to 20 Gbps of firewall throughput.