SonicWALL continues to accelerate its product innovation to strengthen its ability to protect customers and help them stay ahead of emerging threats that are attacking new network architectures, mobile and wireless environments, private and public clouds. Debasish Mukherjee, Country Manager India & SAARC, SonicWALL explains how his brand looks at new age security and the products that it offers to meet these threats - 

How is SonicWALL geared to address the SMB opportunity?

SonicWALL is the global network security leader delivering automated real-time breach detection and prevention that keeps small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises and governments safe from cyber threats. Its disruptive, cloud-based platform brings together endpoint, firewall and cloud application security with management, reporting, analytics and integrated threat visibility.

The SonicWALL Capture Cloud Platform delivers increased value, ease of use and the security efficacy required for today’s cyber arms race, particularly given the likes of Meltdown, Spectre, Foreshadow and threats leveraging Microsoft Office files and PDFs as delivery mechanisms.

How will you define the support architecture of SonicWALL firewalls?

SonicWALL next-generation firewalls are available in both on-premise and virtual options. Likewise, to better layer security and eliminate attack vectors, SonicWALL Email Security may be deployed as an on-premise appliance or in the cloud via the SonicWALL Hosted Email Security solution. It’s also available via a virtual appliance or as a software appliance.Each may be integrated with the SonicWALL Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service. It’s a multi-engine cloud sandbox that mitigated both known and unknown cyber-attacks, including zero-day threats, ransomware and processor-based threats like Spectre, Meltdown and Foreshadow. 

In addition, SonicWALL WAF offers advanced web security tools and services to keep compliance data unexposed and web properties safe, undisrupted and in peak performance.

How do we identify the best UTM?

At SonicWALL, when we talk about security, we always promote a layered, defense-in-depth approach. Many firewall vendors offer the mention capabilities. Each SonicWALL UTM/NGFW firewall has available security services, includinggateway anti-virus and anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, application control and content filtering.

But security cannot be a dependent on one point product. First, organizations should understand how a vendor is able to holistically manage and optimize the security environment across different product types and environments, including firewall, endpoints, email, mobile, wireless, etc. 

Next, investigate what critical firewall features are included. Two important requirements are SSL/TLS inspection and multi-engine cloud sandboxing. The former is critical to ensure that security controls aren’t missing encrypted cyber-attacks. Globally, the SonicWALL Capture Threat Network, which includes more than 1 million sensors across the world, recorded 1.7 million encrypted threats since the beginning of 2018. That’s an 80 percent year-to-date increase over 2017.

Can  you explain how SonicWALL UTM/Next generation systems provide increased protection and visibility as well as control over network security?

The SonicWALL Capture Security Center delivers the foundation for a unified security governance, compliance and risk management strategy. It offers the ultimate in visibility, agility and capacity to govern entire SonicWALL security operations and services with greater clarity, precision and speed, all from a single pane of glass. Organizations, SMBs, governments and mid-tier enterprises can easily manage their complete security ecosystem from the cloud, including -

•    Enterprise-grade firewalls
•    Virtual firewalls for private and public cloud environments, including Microsoft Azure
•    Endpoints inside and outside the network
•    Remote users
•    Email clients

How does SonicWALL University work as a platform to empower partners in the solution curve?

SonicWALL University is sophisticated online, role-based platform to keep SecureFirst partners at the forefront of today’s cyber security threats and solutions. The platform provides role-based web training for sales, sales engineering and post-sales support.  

In fact, partners who complete training have achieved a 21 percent point of sale increase over the same quarter one year prior.The registered tier partners who complete training have achieved a 30 percent point of sale increase over the same quarter one year prior.

•    More than 26,000 partners have registered to become SecureFirst partners. 
•    More than 100,000 hours of training- or 2,500 weeks - have been completed.
•    SonicWALL has administered more than 200,000 successful exams since launched.

How is the SonicWALL UTM solution designed to help protect networks against security threats?

SonicWALL Capture Security Center simplifies and automates multiple tasks to promote tighter security coordination while reducing the complexity, time and expense of performing security operations and administrations. This includes -

Integrated Threat Intelligence - Improve security outcomes from the firewall to the endpoint with integrated threat intelligence between the SonicWALL Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service and Capture Client endpoint protection.

Workflow Automation - Conform to customary firewall policy change management and auditing requirements of various regulatory mandates, such as PCI, HIPAA and GDPR.

Zero-Touch Deployment - Reduce time, cost and complexity associated with the installation, configuration and provisioning of firewalls at remote and branch office locations.

Flexible Reporting - Leverage more than 140 pre-defined report templates to gain awareness of network events, user activities, threats, operational and performance issues, security efficacy, risks and security gaps, compliance readiness and post-mortem analysis.