Firewalls: The Foundation Of Your Enterprise Security Posture

Threats to today's networks continue to grow, with attacks coming from both outside and within corporate networks. These threats can have devastating effects, ranging from business disruption due to a network outage, financial risk resulting from information loss, or liability issues stemming from information tampering. Meanwhile, businesses are striving to improve their profitability and competitiveness through continued business process optimization and automation, leading to increased connectivity with their business partners and customers. These applications offer many benefits, but can also introduce a variety of risks, if not secured properly. Using the world-class security and networking services provided by the Firewall solutions recommended by Integracon, businesses can securely deploy mission-critical applications and networks in a highly reliable manner, while benefiting from the significant investment protection and lower operational costs offered by this unique, modular solution.

Challenge
The information assets and applications traveling on today's networks are the lifeblood of the modern enterprise. As businesses continue to optimize their processes and streamline their operations for improved profitability and competitiveness, their networks become increasingly more complex and interconnected. Now, as businesses depend on these networks as mission-critical infrastructure, the security and reliability challenges businesses face continue to grow.

Examples of threats to today's business networks include:
• Unauthorized network or information access-As businesses increase internal network connectivity and collaboration with new customers and business partners, they need to effectively maintain control of their vital assets to preserve their competitive edge and limit corporate liability. New applications can increase business automation and collaboration, but can also open dangerous security holes, if not secured properly.
• Decreased employee productivity and wasted bandwidth-Businesses need to effectively control the use of applications, such as peer-to-peer file sharing and instant messaging, which plague many unsuspecting businesses, to improve employee productivity and reduce the costs associated with Internet connectivity.
• Unplanned network downtime-Businesses need highly reliable networks that help ensure continuous operations for maximum productivity, including support for planned and unplanned maintenance upgrades. These networks must be able to defend against threats such as Internet-based denial of service attacks or internal sabotage from disgruntled employees or contractors.

Solution
The correct firewall solution for your business will enable you to securely deploy mission-critical applications and networks in a highly reliable manner, while providing significant investment protection and lower operational costs through its unique, modular design. Businesses can protect their networks from unauthorized access using robust policy enforcement services. These services combine with VPN services to enable businesses to securely extend their networks across low-cost Internet connections to business partners, remote sites, and mobile workers. This flexible solution can adapt as an organization's needs evolve along with the ever-changing security threat landscape, giving businesses the ability to easily integrate intrusion prevention, antivirus, antispam, antispyware, URL filtering, and other advanced content security services for additional layers of protection. Combined with management and monitoring application solutions, firewall services can provide world-class security with lower operational costs.

Business Benefits
Firewall services and devices provide the security and connectivity services that helps your business with:
• Controlled access to corporate resources-Prevents unauthorized access to applications or information assets by providing businesses with fine-grain identity- or network-based access control. Integrates with popular user authentication services such as Microsoft Active Directory, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), Kerberos, and RSA SecurID.
• Secure deployment of new applications-Enables businesses to safely deploy new applications by providing advanced application-layer security services for a wide range of popular applications, including Web-based applications, e-mail, voice over IP (VoIP), video, and multimedia applications. Hides corporate network addresses from the Internet for an additional layer of protection from attack.
• Secure remote access to corporate network-Provides both SSL- and IPSec-based methods of threat-protected VPN connectivity to remote sites, business partners, and mobile workers.
• Business resiliency-Prevents disruption of mission-critical applications and services due to security breaches by implementing world-class firewall, VPN, and networking technologies.