Security vendor McAfee has launched its McAfee Network Security Platform NS-series, a new network intrusion prevention system (IPS) appliance based on technology from its parent company, Intel.
According to McAfee, the NS-series offers throughput of up to 40 Gbps, increased scalability and more capacity to run next generation IPS services. It’s McAfee’s first IPS hardware platform based on Intel technology, and Intel engineers worked alongside McAfee engineers to developer a more efficient and more compact appliance, with greater port density than the previous generation.
“Although the raw throughput of the new McAfee NS-series is impressive by any measure, the real story is the full next generation IPS services at those throughputs,” said Pat Calhoun, senior vice-president and general manager of network security at McAfee. “The IPS industry has been talking about next generation IPS functionality for several years now, but when scalability tests are run, these services are almost always disabled, sacrificing security to boost throughput. These next generation IPS services, such as application visibility, situational and behavioural analysis, are needed to address today’s advanced threats.”
According to the vendor, the additional power in the McAfee NS-series solidifies a more realistic way to measure true IPS scalability. It delivers 40 Gbps of performance with all of the NGIPS services running, which McAfee says is a must, given the ever increasing demand for more bandwidth and the rapid adoption of 10 GigE and 40 GigE.