When we officially launched Firefly Perimeter in January 2014, it came with a stateful firewall in a virtual machine format supporting both VMware and KVM, along with NAT, IPSec VPN, and advanced routing features. Now with the latest 12.1X47-D15 release, Firefly Perimeter customers can take advantage of advanced security features such as IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems) and UTM (Unified Threat Management) and deploy them in the virtualized datacenter and cloud infrastructure.
UTM and IPS are used to identify malicious activity between security zones. When a threat is found, we first attempt to block/stop it then we log this activity for reporting. At a high level, IPS works by scrutinizing all of the bits contained within packets to look for known attacks. Juniper provided downloadable predefined application signatures that detect TCP and UDP applications running on nonstandard ports. The Firefly Perimeter IPS module monitors passing through network traffic, detects suspicious and anomalous traffic based on specific IPS rules, then selectively enforces various attack detection and prevention techniques.
On the other hand, UTM is an industry term that was coined to define Layer 7 protection against client-side threats. It utilizes technologies such as network-based antivirus protection, URL filtering, anti-spam solutions, and content filtering. While IPS is primarily focused on network-based attacks on protocols and is stream based (it processes traffic inline without modifying it as a stream), UTM is meant to protect against malicious files (malware) and URL’s as well as enforce local policies for Internet usage.
Both IPS and UTM (Sophos Anti Virus, Sophos Anti-Spam, WebSense Enhanced Web Filtering) licenses are based on an annual subscription model, available in one-, three-, or five-year increments. The licenses can be purchased a la carte, or bundled, depending on customer’s specific needs. UTM Content Filtering and basic URL Filtering features are free and require no additional license.
Please visit the listed links for more technical details on IPS features as well as UTM features. If you cannot wait to see how these advanced security features and Firefly Perimeter works in general, you can start evaluating today by downloading the latest Firefly Perimeter 12.1X47-D15 release image here (no license required for evaluation). Installation and configuration instructions are also available from the same link.