Juniper Expands Security Gateway Lineup

The networking specialist promises more sophisticated unified threat management capabilities in a push to land deals in distributed enterprise settings.

Juniper Networks introduced three new security appliances on Oct. 2, adding unified threat management tools to its existing hardware in an effort to market the gateway devices to branch offices and other remote enterprise operations.

The three new products, added to Junipers SSG (Secure Services Gateway) appliance lineup, specifically promise to offer more comprehensive filtering capabilities for blocking malware and other threats from infiltrating or traveling over corporate networks running between central operations and distributed operations such as branch offices.

The devices all offer a built-in firewall and VPN, along with anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam, Web filtering and intrusion protection features, with integration between the tools being pitched by the company as one of the products most important benefits.

Two of the new network security gateways, dubbed the SSg 5 and the SSG 20, promise to handle up to 160M bps of firewall traffic and 40M bps of VPN throughput, with the more powerful SSG 140 platform slated to deliver more than 350M bps of firewall traffic and 100M bps of VPN data. All three of the devices run on Junipers ScreenOS 5.4 operating system.

In the area of UTM (unified threat management), Juniper officials said the new gateways will pool data from intrusion prevention, anti-virus and Web filtering tools to better protect traffic flowing in and out of remote networks, specifically targeting threats including worm viruses, spyware, and Trojan attacks. In addition to serving as integrated gateways, the machines may also be employed as stand-alone network protection devices.

"Within the context of branch offices, companies are increasingly allowing these types of operations to connect directly to Internet and use that as an IT backbone, which is driving a need for more remote management and security technologies," said Stephen Philip, senior director of product marketing for Juniper, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. "With the range of malware attacks and spam, combined with a greater number of internal security threats and a growing demand for content protection technologies, devices such as this that can provide integrated threat management, or work as a stand-alone security device, are what customers have been asking us to build."

Philip said that an increasing number of enterprises are rolling out layered UTM systems, which place more of an emphasis on securing the network at the gateway, and that companies push to allow more employees to work remotely is also driving adoption of the appliance devices.

Larry Seltzer says the next-generation version of unified threat management is a little less unified. Click here to read more. With the addition of the three newest gateway appliances, Juniper now offers nine models within its SSG family. The SSG 5, which starts at $700, offers seven Ethernet ports and a factory-configured WAN and optional support for 802.11 wireless platforms. The SSG 20, which sells for $900, features five Ethernet ports and two expansion slots, and supports optional 802.11 wireless systems connectivity.

The SSG 140, which is priced at roughly $3,000, boasts eight Ethernet ports and two copper Gb ports, along with four WAN expansion slots. The SSG 5 and SSG 20 are targeted at small branch offices and power user telecommuters, while the SSG 140 is designed for midsize branch offices and stand-alone businesses, Juniper said.

"Juniper Networks has taken a leading security device platform and has evolved it into a very strong multifunction security and routing platform including intrusion prevention, anti-virus, anti-spam and Web filtering," Charles Kolodgy, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC, wrote in a report. "The advanced content security functionality enhances existing application and network-level threat control, and offers performance and extensibility to ensure security processing for distributed enterprises and branch offices."

Editors Note: A previous version of this story inaccurately reported pricing details for Junipers SSG 5 and SSG 20 security gateway appliances. Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest security news, reviews and analysis. And for insights on security coverage around the Web, take a look at eWEEK.com Security Center Editor Larry Seltzers Weblog.