Gearing up to combat what it said is a rise in security threats to corporate
intranets, RapidStream Inc. Monday released a new firewall appliance to
shore up office security.
The RapidStream 1000 bundles a 200 Mbps firewall with 50 Mbps of VPN,
allowing companies to implement security within their corporate intranet
quickly and cost effectively. RapidStream said the real value-add with this
product is that it contains the same feature set of its high-end models, yet
costs a shade under 2,000.
RapidStream 1000 boasts firewall inspection, hacker defense, IPSec VPN and
digital certificates, but also included a unique port for failover
protection; if the primary unit fails, the backup unit activates via the
industry-standard virtual routing redundancy protocol (VRRP), eclipsing the
normal delays in dispatching a technician to install and configure a
replacement unit.
Also saving crucial time is that RapidStream 1000 is powered by the
company’s programmable security ASIC, RapidCore. With this, latency is
measured in microseconds, crucial for Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or
delay-sensitive applications where millisecond latencies are an impediment.
To be sure, corporate security is a concern (just ask Microsoft or eBay) as
companies’ networks have been attacked en masse in recent months.
In a recent study, the Computer Security Institute surveyed 538 computer
security practitioners in the U.S. and seventy percent of the respondents
(primarily large corporations and government agencies) cited their Internet
connection as a frequent point of attack, an eleven percent increase from
last year’s survey.
Thirty one percent reported recurrent attacks on their internal systems. But
perhaps most alarming is that 64 percent of those surveyed acknowledged
financial losses due to computer breaches.
Vince Liu, RapidStream president and chief executive officer, said
RapidStream 1000 was designed to help companies seal such security gaps,
whether external or internal.
The RapidStream 1000 will be available in May 2001 from RapidStream reseller
and partner channels for $1,195.
