Cisco Expands Security Portfolio With IPS Device

"This will handle up to 4 gigs. Its throughput capabilities are of paramount importance," said Cisco partner David Harrison, senior consulting systems engineer at WorldWide Technologies. "The bandwidth rivals anything out there.

Security needs for media- and transaction-rich environments are constantly changing, increasingly becoming more diverse. Consequently, more powerful and sophisticated intrusion prevention methods are required, partners say.

The new IPS 4270 sensor addresses continuing challenges that most businesses face -- meeting the demands of a high, and constantly growing, volume of traffic, accurately, efficiently and without disruption. The new IPS enables businesses to focus protection efforts specifically where the greatest amount traffic occurs within their enterprise core locations.

The new system's collaborative applications portfolio includes video, voice and social networking tools with 4Gpbs performance for media-intensive environments that feature Web-based content and video. For high-traffic networks such as e-commerce, Instant Messaging, point-of-sale and Voice over Internet Protocol, the IPS offers 2Gbps of throughput while supporting 20,000 transactions per second.

Partners maintain what really separates this from other IP devices is its ability to handle bandwidth. The increased throughput also doesn't impede or compromise its security capabilities, they say.

"One of the things my customers were worried about was that they didn't want to create a bottleneck in their network," said Harrison. "(The IPS) is able to process. Not just traffic, but media-rich traffic with deep inspection of the signatures and anomalies."

In addition, the IPS system features an enhanced failover, Harrison added. "If the device loses power, you don't lose your connectivity," he said. "We tested the failover right in the middle of traffic. It was seamless."

Because every enterprise features a unique architecture to support specific demands, the IPS can also integrate fluidly and without disruption to the overall data center system by virtualizing both inspection and policy information.

"Cisco has made a conscientious effort to design a flexible, powerful and virtualization friendly IPS sensor device that meets the critical needs of high traffic environments," said Mick Scully, vice president of product management for Cisco's Security Technology group, in a written statement. "Simply put, the IPS 4270 has the performance to address today's real-world enterprise and data center requirements."