Crossbeam Systems Enhanced Operating System For C-Series Product Suite

Published 25th April 2007

Intelligent Fail Open and Layer 2 Bridging on Enterprise UTM Platforms Give True Meaning to Flexible Security Infrastructure...

Crossbeam Systems Inc., the leader in Unified Threat Management (UTM) for the world's largest networks, has announced a significant operating system upgrade to its C-Series suite of UTM platforms for intelligent, best-of-breed, security services delivery. The C-Series Operating System (COS) 6.0 brings flexible network security design with Layer 2 bridging and intelligent bypass ports to provide administrators with greater control and adaptability over security infrastructure deployments.

Layer 2 bridging support eliminates the need for network topology changes when a new security application is added, giving IT administrators the power and flexibility to decide the best design for their network. In Layer 2 mode, the C-series platform and accompanying applications are transparent to a potential hacker, adding yet more facilities to improve the security posture of the network.

With intelligent bypass ports, the administrator can now decide how best to manage traffic flows in the event of failure. A system can now be configured to permit traffic to continue to flow through the device in the event of a power or application failure. Crossbeam's C6 provides two bypass segments, C12 provides four bypass segments, and C25 provides six bypass segments.

Both of these capabilities empower administrators to manage the balance between strong security and optimal network performance, a growing problem for organisations as security becomes increasingly virtualised and segmented throughout the network.

Other new features in the updated C-Series include:

- Departmental/internal Layer 2 firewall with Checkpoint VPN-1 Power NGX
- In-line Layer 2 Web security with Websense Security Suite 6.3 and Websense Threat Manager 1.1
- Scaling capabilities such as bulk import of routing tables

Application performance, always a Crossbeam strength, continues with COS 6.0, providing up to 6 Gbps of firewall traffic, and content filtering performance to support thousands of users. COS 6.0 has the performance to support LAN speeds at a price that allows for distributed security.

"It is difficult to strike a balance between continuous network availability and effective security policies in a fluid network security landscape," said Charles Kolodgy, research director at IDC. "Flexibility in design is critical, and Crossbeam has figured out a way to let network administrators mesh security policy with network requirements with its newly upgraded C-Series."

Crossbeam Systems enables enterprises to deploy a highly manageable and consolidated security services layer that intelligently enforces corporate risk-management strategy and policies across the network. Powered by custom, high performance networking, compute and control elements, enterprises can improve the security, scalability, and performance of their businesses by reducing costs, consolidating services, and radically reducing complexity.

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