An Intrusion Detection System or IDS is a security solution which, when deployed in a network, monitors the network traffic for malicious and suspicious activities, and alerts the security administrators by triggering the alarm. There is a misconception that an Intrusion Detection System is a firewall. Although both IDS and firewall are network security appliances, they differ in their functionality and the approach they take to monitor the network traffic. Read More

This article gives a list of possible reasons causing throughput and performance issues in the SonicWALL UTM appliance. The list is not complete but only an enumeration of some of the common possible solutions. Each SonicWALL UTM appliance series has different performance capabilities depending upon hardware specifications such as the CPU, the RAM or the Flash memory. It is recommended to check the particular device's capabilities before deciding that the performance related issues with the device is due to other factors. Read More

Two key features in SonicOS Enhanced 5.8.1 regarding the mode of deployment of a SonicWALL firewall appliance are: Wire Mode and Tap Mode. The Wired Mode enables you to augment existing firewalls by inserting in a least-intrusive manner a NGFW while the TAP mode allows you to perform traffic inspection and analysis using an out-of-path model.

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Skype is a proprietary voice over IP service that allows users to make voice calls over the Internet. Skype users can call each other free-of-charge; calling mobile phones or landlines costs a fee. Next Generation Firewalls(NGFW) like SonicWALL can control access to applications per users or group of users. They include an automatically updated database of application signatures; the administrator can block access to Skype for all users except for the group of users that needs Skype.

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SonicWALL SonicPoints are wireless access points specially engineered to work with SonicWALL firewalls to provide enterprise-level wireless access. With a SonicPoint, wireless traffic is scrutinized and inspected in a similar way with the wired network traffic. The combination of a SonicWALL firewall and a SonicPoint offers many features that make it an excellent choice for many scenarios.

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Gateway antivirus inspection can add an additional layer of protection against today’s threats like malware or viruses. SonicWALL NGFW is able to perform gateway antivirus inspection over many protocols(including encrypted ones) with no file size limitations and without introducing performance issues.

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The two modes of operation of SonicOS Enhanced, Transparent and L2 Bridge, allow drop-in deployment solutions of SonicWALL firewalls. They enable enterprises with no immediate plans of current firewall replacement to benefit from UTM security along with a smooth migration path to full security services operation. In this article we will discuss which one to use and when

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"Bots" are small applications that are installed on a users computer and run quietly in the background awaiting commands from a botnet control server. The botnet control server manages and sends instructions to bots all around the world. The bots can be instructed to perform tasks such as launching a denial of service attack on a website to gathering banking and credit card information.

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Some people may not realize it but there isn’t a straight definition for a WAF. We can refer to it as to a network or host based  security technology that acts as middle man analyzing layer 7 traffic flow(at session level not at packet level) with the purpose of enhancing the security of a web application.

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SonicWALL WXA 4000 and WXA 2000 are now available to buy at Firewalls.com. With the WXA Series, application acceleration is achieved through the de-duplication of transmitted data using SonicWALL's advanced proprietary byte caching technology as well as TCP protocol optimization and data compression. Further, for Wide Area File Services (WFS), the WXA Series provides intelligent local file caching and CIFS protocol optimization which enables acceleration of remote file servers saving time and network resources

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