Application Intelligence and Traditional Firewalls

Application intelligence and traditional firewalls

Used in combination with traditional firewall features, application intelligence can provide greater protection against new and evolving channels for emerging threats. For example, a compromised Facebook page might suggest that a "friend" click a link to launch a YouTube video-which is actually a link to a malware file.

Because application intelligence can detect this link and file over the application traffic, it could enable an antimalware and content filtering policy to prevent the malicious file from downloading, thereby protecting both the user and the corporate network.

Conclusion

The growth of cloud-based application traffic has exceeded the security capabilities of traditional firewalls. Fortunately, new application intelligence technology can address the most common problems that come with these emerging trends. When deployed effectively on high-performance platforms, application intelligence gateways offer IT a viable solution for cloud-based application security.

David Buckwald is Director of Systems Engineering at SonicWALL. Prior to SonicWALL, David spent seven years at Aventail as the director of systems engineering for the United States. David has over 20 years of experience in networking, security, and systems management technologies. Prior to Aventail, David was a principal systems engineer at Tivoli Systems and a Certified Networking Specialist at IBM. David holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from SUNY Potsdam and a Master's degree in Information Management from Polytechnic University. He can be reached at dbuckwald@sonicwall.com.