Network traffic management startup Cato Networks Ltd. is beefing up its platform security with the launch a new Intrusion Prevention System designed to spot advanced threats as soon as they appear.

The IPS offering integrates with the Cato Cloud secure software-defined wide area network service, which enables centrally controlled communications management from data centers, branch offices and cloud deployments.

Cato argued that existing intrusion prevention systems are inefficient because of the use of Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer inspection on encrypted traffic, which degrades their performance thanks to capacity constraints. The company also pointed out that traditional IPS inspection is location-bound, meaning it does not extend to cloud and mobile traffic.

Cato said its new cloud-based IPS solves these problems by leveraging data insights from the Cato Cloud to update and maintain IPS signatures automatically. New signatures are validated on real traffic before being applied to customer’s production traffic. The new IPS further boosts efficiency by applying “Advanced Security Everywhere,” scanning web and WAN traffic for all branch office and mobile users, wherever they’re located. In addition, Cato’s IPS doesn’t have any capacity constraints, which means TLS/SSL inspection has no negative impact on its performance.

Another interesting feature is Context-Aware Protection, which refers to the use of “advanced behavioral signatures” to identify suspicious traffic patterns in multiple ways. For example, Cato IPS can apply rules based on network services or business applications to filter out suspicious traffic. It can also scan DNS streams in order to detect anomalies in DNS queries, and can uncover instances where attackers change executable filename extensions in order to deceive users to open malicious files.

Cato said the new IPS has already been integrated with the Cato Cloud, meaning the new features are available now.

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