New Firewall Boosts Network Performance

Firewalls can do a good job of preventing network intrusions and helping to track down malicious threats that have gained entrance. But if the process takes too long, network performance can be slowed.

BorderWare Technologies Inc. introduced a new firewall Tuesday that's designed to improve network performance while also providing security-policy enforcement and management, content control, and easy deployment. The MXtreme Mail Firewall version 5.0 will boost throughput by 30% compared with its predecessor, according to BorderWare, which will let customers handle increasing E-mail volumes without investing in more bandwidth and infrastructure.

A new user interface comes with simplified navigation, real-time help, and less complex configuration. Policy management now includes content filtering. And content management includes objectionable-content filtering, which can be set up to apply rules to incoming and outgoing messages to keep unwanted content from entering the network. MXtreme pricing starts at $7,995 for the MX-200 and goes to $65,000 for the high-end MX-1000.

"Near-term, this firewall should be able to address processing bottlenecks from virus, spam, and Trojan horse searches," says Michael Osterman, an industry analyst and founder of Osterman Research. "Without the performance boost, searching creates problems for backing up messages."