SonicWall has announced new email security platform and firewall operating system capabilities for enhanced breach prevention against ransomware, zero-day and advanced threats. SonicWall Email Security 9.0 now integrates with Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Service to deliver a cloud-based, multi-engine sandbox that not only inspects email traffic for suspicious code, but also blocks malicious files from entering the network until a verdict is reached. SonicWall also unveiled a preview of SonicOS 6.2.7 operating system, delivering better breach prevention, a new threat Application Program Interface (API), more scalability and connectivity, and ease of management.
According to the 2017 SonicWall Annual Threat Report, organisations are facing an onslaught of new security challenges. According to the SonicWall Global Response Intelligence Defence (GRID) Threat Network, the growth in ransomware attack attempts grew by 167x year-over-year to 638 million in 2016. SonicWall has a track record of introducing continuous cybersecurity innovations to provide defence-in-depth protection against these pervasive threats, such as its award-winning cloud-based, multi-engine Capture ATP Service introduced last year.
“Our 2017 SonicWall Annual Threat Report found that email remains a highly successful attack vector for cyber criminals because it’s all too easy for employees to fall victim to ransomware, phishing and unknown threats,” said Bill Conner, president and CEO, SonicWall. “SonicWall is enabling customers to stay one step ahead of cyber criminals by bolstering our platform with innovations that inspect and render a verdict on all email coming into and going out of their organisations, while keeping performance and usability high.”
SonicWall Email Security 9.0
SonicWall Email Security 9.0 with Capture ATP Service utilises cloud-based sandboxing technology to detect advanced threats by scanning a range of email attachment types, analysing them in a multi-engine sandbox, blocking them until reviewed by an administrator, and rapidly deploying remediation signatures. Signatures for newly discovered malware are quickly generated and automatically distributed across the SonicWall GRID Threat Network, thereby preventing further infiltration by the identified malware threat. Organisations have a choice of administrative options ranging from removing an offending email attachment to blocking an entire message, leading to higher security effectiveness and faster response times.
Additional features of SonicWall Email Security 9.0 include:
- Advanced Threat Protection: The solution incorporates anti-spam, anti-virus and anti-spoofing functionalities to not only detect and prevent spam and other unwanted email, but also scan email messages and attachments for ransomware, Trojan horses, worms and other types of malicious content.
- Improved Office 365 Support: Office 365 customers can enhance their security by enabling SonicWall Hosted Email Security protection.
- Updated Line of Appliances: SonicWall is refreshing its line of hardware appliances to help customers better face threats delivered by email.
- Encryption Protection: In addition to supporting SMTP Authentication, the encryption service feature enables any email identified as containing protected data to be automatically encrypted, routed for approval or archived.
- Policy and Compliance Management: The policy management feature enables an administrator to enact policies that filter messages and their contents as they enter or exit the organisation. This allows organisations to meet regulatory requirements based on government legislation, industry standards or corporate governance activities.
“SonicWall Email Security featuring Capture ATP Service will further protect customers worldwide against known and unknown threats while defending against data leaks and compliance violations,” Conner said. “As an independent cybersecurity company, SonicWall is persevering to help protect customers in today’s cyber arms race by integrating Capture ATP Service across the portfolio.”
As attack methods evolve frequently, it is difficult for IT teams to ensure organisations are operating at optimal efficiencies and consistencies, while also meeting changing network security requirements. To address these network security challenges, the company is previewing SonicOS 6.2.7 which provides enhanced breach prevention, a new threat API, improved scalability and connectivity while simplifying management to ensure small businesses and large distributed enterprises receive a high quality-of-service level, increased on-demand capacity and connectivity and better security.
Additional new features of SonicOS 6.2.7 will include:
- Deep Packet Inspection of Secure Socket Shell (DPI-SSH): Detects and prevents advanced encrypted attacks that leverage SSH, blocks encrypted malware downloads, ceases the spread of infections, and thwarts command and control communications and data exfiltration.
- Threat API: Designed to ingest any and all proprietary, original equipment manufacturer and third-party intelligence feeds to combat advanced threats such as zero-day, malicious insider, compromised credentials, ransomware and advanced persistent threats.
- Biometric Authentication: Supports mobile device authentication such as fingerprint recognition that cannot be easily duplicated or shared to securely authenticate the user identity for network access.
- Dell X-Series Switch Extensibility: For large distributed network infrastructures with massive capacity and connectivity requirements, SonicWall has extended its Dell X-Series integration by doubling the switch and port counts under firewall management. This gives organisations enhanced network security flexibility and scalability to adapt to service-level increases and ensures that network services and resources are available and protected when the capacity grows without having to upgrade the firewall system.
- Easy VPN: Designed to simplify and reduce complex distributed firewall deployment down to a trivial effort by automating the initial site-to-site VPN gateway provisioning while security and connectivity occurs instantly and automatically.
“As a loyal SonicWall channel partner, we at Napa Valley Networks were thrilled to see SonicWall resume operations as a standalone cyber security company and go back to its roots of driving a deeper focus on technological innovation,” said Julie Neely, founding partner of Napa Valley Networks. “SonicWall Email Security 9.0 with Capture Advanced Threat Protection Service and the SonicOS 6.2.7 preview are clear demonstrations of the company’s continued commitment to better serving its channel partners.”
“At Sterling Computers, our mission is to help government and education customers get the most out of their tech infrastructure,” said Steve Van Ginkel, vice president of Business Development & Partner Alliances at Sterling Computers. “With the continued onslaught of ransomware, malware and other cyber-attacks, our customers are looking to us to provide them with solutions that allow them to spend more time conducting day-to-day business while staying abreast of the threat landscape. SonicWall allows our engineers, and most importantly our customers, to sleep at night!”
Availability & pricing
SonicWall Email Security 9.0 with Capture ATP Service will be available worldwide on February 28, 2017. Leveraging a highly-scalable and redundant architecture, SonicWall Email Security offers an array of deployment options, including on-premises appliances, virtual machine, software and cloud-hosted solutions. Pricing for Hosted Email Security starts at $20 per user per year, and Capture for Hosted Email Security will run an additional $4 per user per year.
SonicOS 6.2.7 is currently in beta and will be generally available for download via com to partners and customers worldwide in late Q1. Available with SonicOS Standard Support contracts, including software and firmware updates, pricing will start at $78 per year.
