Distributed Personal Firewall is a state-of-the-art personal firewall with no graphical user interface and no requirement for the user having to make any decisions. The Policy Manager allows system administrators to define and distribute global policies for all AppGate personal firewalls in a network. The administrator can easily create and distribute firewall policies centrally to a large number of workstations and network servers on a corporate network. Rapid distribution of policies makes it possible to block certain kinds of traffic globally in the network when needed. Central administration also means that users of protected machines no longer have to be system administrators and manage their own personal firewall settings.
“With the Policy Manager it is possible to define different policies for machines based on system classes and IP addresses, for example to distribute one policy for user workstations and another for various types of corporate servers” Tomas Olovsson explaines, CTO AppGate Network Security AB. He continues: “All systems should be protected by a policy that only allows them to receive and send the necessary traffic required to run its applications. This prevents unauthorized users from gaining access to other users workstations and makes it harder, if not impossible, for viruses and worms to spread between workstations and servers.”
All policies downloaded to clients are signed by the policy manager to prevent spoofing. The clients are able to verify that the policies they receive are current and authentic before installing and using them. Several policy managers can also work in parallel to achieve a high degree of redundancy as well as to offer load sharing on very large networks.
The Policy Manager is normally placed on an internal corporate network. Two different policies can be distributed: one to use when the protected machine is connected to a Policy Manager and one that is used when the workstation is located outside the corporate network. Attacks against portable users are a threat to many organizations since these computers often are moved between internal networks and the Internet. If not properly protected, they can carry malicious software from the outside to the inside. In addition, if the VPN system can verify that the personal firewall is running a specific rule-set, it can be the enabler that makes it possible to offer new applications to external users.
The policy manager is delivered as a software package. It runs on Windows, Unix and Linux systems and any other platform having Java version 1.4 or later installed. The policy manager should preferably run on a dedicated server and must, of course, have proper protection either by an external firewall or by the AppGate Personal Firewall.
The release of the Distributed Personal Firewall concept marks a new era for AppGate Network Security where AppGate for the first time releases a product separated from the AppGate Server. Again it reinforces AppGate's technical leadership in the SSH/SSL VPN and secure access space.
AppGate Network Security specializes in providing extremely secure network solutions such as SSH/SSL VPNs, personal firewalls and application protection systems.
AppGate Network Security ties together all the pieces of security technology in one easy-to-use system. AppGate solutions work in both fixed and wireless network environments, with the broad range of client systems and scales from small user systems up to enterprise level customers, supporting thousands of users.
That is why AppGate Network Security has some of the largest and most prestigious corporations in the world as customers.
Göran Marby, CEO AppGate Network Security AB
+46 730-66 77 20
goran.marby@appgate.com
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