Cisco SA 540 300Mbit/s hardware firewall

SA 540 with IPS and ProtectLink Gateway 100 Licenses, 3 year The Cisco SA 500 Series Security Appliances, part of the Cisco Small Business Pro Series, are comprehensive gateway security solutions that combine firewall, VPN, and optional intrusion prevention and web and email security capabilities, helping you feel confident that your business is protected and resilient. These easy-to-use security appliances let you control access to network resources, enabling you to protect business data and maximize network uptime. The Cisco SA 500 Series also helps increase employee productivity by controlling web access, spam emails, phishing attacks, unauthorized intrusions, and other emerging threats, as well as by freeing IT resources from virus eradication and system cleanup activities. With the Cisco SA 500 Series, you can safely deploy new business applications without opening up security holes. Mobile employees and business partners can also securely connect to your network over the Internet using IP Security (IPsec) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN services. With a Cisco SA 500 Series solution protecting your network, you can focus on growing your business without worrying about the latest security threats.

Challenge
The Internet has become a critical business tool for organizations of all sizes, offering new opportunities for business growth and allowing partners and remote workers to access the business network via VPN connections. But it is also a conduit for threats to enter a company's network, and these threats can have a significant negative impact:

- Unauthorized access can lead to loss of company data, unplanned downtime, and related liability concerns.

- Viruses can infect systems, bringing them down and resulting in outages and lost revenue.

- Spam and phishing create a nuisance and contribute to a loss of employee productivity.

- Spyware provides a direct inside view of your network and data that can lead to identity theft and business data loss.

- Browsing of non-work-related and harmful websites leads to lost productivity, exposure to viruses and spyware, and possible legal issues involving employees.

Solution
The Cisco SA 500 Series provides small companies with comprehensive gateway security and VPN connectivity. With its combined firewall, email, and web security capabilities, the Cisco SA 500 Series stops threats before they enter the network and affect business operations. The Cisco SA 500 Series:

- Allows valid business traffic to flow while keeping out unwelcome visitors. It also supports a public accessable network area, known as a demilitarized zone (DMZ), to safely host file, web, and other Internet-accessible servers without exposing the business's internal LAN network to threats.

- Proactively prevents intrusions and blocks dangerous peer-to-peer communications: With the optional Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) for SA 500 license, the SA 500 Series is able to identify possible intrusions into the business network and take action to stop the intrusion and prevent further risk. Additionally, the SA 500 Series can block peer-to-peer and instant messaging traffic and perform protocol inspection to help increase network security, enhance employee productivity, and keep the network available for business traffic.

- Provides full-strength email and web protection at full speed: With robust content security capabilities delivered via the optional Cisco ProtectLink Gateway subscription offering, the Cisco SA 500 Series provides critical perimeter security services for comprehensive protection:

– Full-strength protection at full speed: ProtectLink Gateway services are delivered via a unique cloud-based approach. Emails destined for your small business are first inspected by Cisco's technology partner, Trend Micro, using enterprise-class inspection capabilities to stop a greater range of threats. For example, ProtectLink Gateway will scan your emails for more than 3 million different virus patterns and more than 400,000 spyware patterns. Additional antispam technology is provided via 10 different inspection technologies that evaluate not just the sender's network address reputation, but also the actual content of the email itself. Other small business products cannot make similar claims. In addition to the security benefits this approach provides, it avoids the compromise many other vendors make of having to slow down the bandwidth of traffic in order to inspect email and web content. With ProtectLink Gateway, more threats are stopped before they get to your business, without affecting bandwidth.

– Antivirus: Award-winning antivirus technology shields your internal network resources from both known and unknown virus attacks, at the most effective point in your infrastructure, the Internet gateway. Filtering your email and web traffic at the perimeter eliminates the need for resource-intensive cleanup of an infection and helps ensure business continuity.

– Antispyware: Blocking spyware at the gateway prevents it from entering your network through Internet traffic (HTTP and FTP) and email, avoiding costly spyware removal procedures and improving employee productivity.

– Antispam: Effective blocking of spam, with very low false positives, helps restore the effectiveness of email, so that communication with customers, vendors, and partners continues uninterrupted.

– Antiphishing: Identity theft protection guards against phishing attacks, thereby preventing employees from inadvertently disclosing company or personal details that could lead to financial loss.

– URL filtering: Web and URL filtering can be used to control employee Internet usage by blocking access to inappropriate or non-work-related websites, improving employee productivity and limiting the risk of legal action by employees exposed to offensive web content.

- Increases the security of remote access: With support for VeriSign Indentity Protection (VIP) Services, the Cisco SA 500 Series provides two-factor authentication and one-time-use password access control for an increased level of remote access security without the need to purchase any additional authentication equipment.

- Offers easy deployment and management: The Cisco SA 500 Series can be managed via the embedded Security Appliance Configuration Utility, a powerful yet easy-to-use browser-based management and monitoring interface. This single solution provides comprehensive configuration and monitoring of all the services in a single application. The Security Appliance Configuration Utility can also be launched from Cisco Configuration Assistant. In addition, the Cisco SA 500 Series supports Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) monitoring.