Astaro Security Linux 3.0 announced
At the Networld + Interop Conference, Astaro Corporation announced version 3 of its combined Astaro Security Linux firewall / VPN / anti-virus / content filtering security software. This complete software appliance also bundles a hardened Linux kernel.
As a firewall, Astaro Security Linux protects your network; the proxies filter your network traffic, and by using the VPN functionality, your LAN can safely be extended to subsidiaries, customers and home-offices.
The Firewall’s stateful packet inspection guards against denial-of-service attacks such as SYN and UDP floods, Smurf, Trinoo and IP spoofing. The VPN authenticates via IPsec and Pre-shared Key, and its PPTP offers 128-bit encryption. Throughput is 33 Mbps using IPsec encryption and 650 Mbps without.
The new Astaro Security Linux v3 release features round-robin load balancing, Surf Protection (URL blocking) and a new high availability module. Other features include an Up2Date service that automatically updates new virus signatures and URL black lists, a WebAdmin tool that allows for remote administration, Quality of Service (QoS) and enhanced support for DSL and cable modem Internet access. Astaro continues to deliver on its all-in-one Swiss army knife software security solution.
Additional details on the new modules include:
High Availability – Provides high accessibility to the Firewall installation. A serial or Ethernet connection via Hot-Stand-By-Unit recognizes a problem in the active Firewall and automatically takes over the complete data transfer, deactivating the faulty system, ensuring continued access to the Internet and informing the Administrator.
More Security for Road Warriors and Remote Offices – Astaro version 3 now offers complete support of VPN connections for mobile users through dynamic IP addresses with pre-shared keys as well as PKI-Support with certified X.509v3. The software contains DHCP-Server and DHCP-Client functions for the management and distribution of dynamic IP addresses. Additionally, Point-to-Point over Ethernet connections (PPPoE) allows users with a DSL-connection the ability to use Astaro directly as a DSL-router.
Load-Balancing/Quality of Service – ASL is able to act as a load-balancer and distributes the data exchange using a Round-Robin method, for example, on a cluster of HTTP servers. Furthermore, Quality of Service guarantees efficient bandwidth management, as well as the management of priorities levels by user/group or type of service (i.e. SMTP vs HTTP).
Other Features – Include transparent encoding of SMTP-connections (TLS) and authentication of WebAdmin-Logins. SMTP-User versus RADIUS-server, guarantee of time sensitive correct log files through the support of the Network-Time-Protocols (NTP) with “slow-time-change” as well as improvement in the installation through an improved web based installation wizard.