Dell has announced the latest SonicWALL TZ firewall appliances. These solid state appliances are targeted at Small to Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) and bring features previously only available in large enterprise SonicWALL firewalls.
There are five models in the new SonicWALL TZ series of devices ranging from the SOHO which is designed for small offices up to the TZ600 which is aimed at medium-sized business and some larger enterprise customers. All of the devices come with access to Dell SonicWALL suite of security services including the ability to enforce anti-virus and anti-spam on clients, gateway anti-virus, intrusion protection, botnet detection and content filtering. Customers also get access to the CloudAV malware protection which sits on the Dell SonicWALL cloud.
Network access is provided for wired clients using Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports with the SOHO supporting 5 and the TZ600 supporting 10. All the devices support 802.11ac for wireless connections and backup Internet connection is supported through the use of 3G/4G support. For those who want to provide access for workers outside of the office, there is built-in SSL-VPN support.
SonicWALL TZ to address latest security threats
In its 2015 Dell Security Annual Threat Report, Dell highlighted the use of SSL by hackers to encrypt traffic streams effectively masking their attacks and the data they were exfiltrating from the enterprise. One of the key features of the SonicWALL TZ that Dell is pushing is its ability to carry out deep packet inspection of SSL traffic.
According to Patrick Sweeney, executive director, Dell Network Security: “Sadly, technology designed to protect our information is being used to penetrate networks. Encryption should be a great tool, but used by the wrong people, it becomes a weapon against us. The new TZs give small networks and small business locations the vital big enterprise capability of scanning encrypted traffic to ferret out malicious traffic and attacks. The new TZs provide this security without breaking the bank and without bringing the network to its knees.”
Making this possible is the new multi-core processors that Dell has used. The advantage of these new processors is that with the exception of the exception of the new SonicWALL TZ SOHO model, each of the new models outperforms some of the existing NSA enterprise models such as the NSA 220 and the NSA 250M. This will interest a lot of SonicWALL enterprise customers who will look at the lower pricing of the TZ series and see them as potential replacement models.
Not just for the SME
Looking through the details specifications at the bottom of the marketing sheet, it is clear that these are not just targeted at the SME. Each of these models can be managed remotely through the Dell SonicWALL Global Management System (GMS). As a result, security teams can enforce upgrades to all appliances to prevent out of date software causing security gaps.
GMS also provides administrators with the ability to pull back all the logs from individual appliances so that it can be used as part of a wider security intelligence approach. This allows security teams to spot attempts to penetrate the network from different points and put in countermeasures.
