SonicWall Inc. today debuted two new firewall appliances, the NSa 2800 and NSa 3800, that promise to help companies more effectively block cyberattacks.

The devices are rolling out alongside a new managed service called MPSS. It’s designed to reduce the amount of effort involved in maintaining an organization’s firewalls.

“With this launch, we are bringing together industry-leading firewall threat performance, cloud-based ZTNA to replace legacy VPNs, co-managed NOC and SOC services, and an industry-first cybersecurity warranty so managed service providers have every tool they need to ensure the businesses they serve are safe, in a scalable and cost-effective way,” said SonicWall Chief Executive Officer Bob VanKirk.

Milpitas, California-based SonicWall is a former Dell Technologies Inc. unit that spun off into an independent company in 2016. It sells cybersecurity products that help companies filter malicious network traffic, protect employee inboxes from hackers and perform related tasks. The new NSa 2800 and NSa 3800 systems that SonicWall debuted today expand its lineup of mid-range physical firewall appliances.

The NSa 2800 can scan up to 5.5 gigabits of network traffic every second to find potential threats. The pricier NSa 3800, in turn, has a capacity of 12 gigabits per second. The devices can support up to 2 million and 3 million connections, respectively.

Most of the data traffic that travels through a company’s network is encrypted, which means its contents can’t be scanned for malware. SonicWall’s firewalls decrypt packets to examine their contents and then restore encryption to prevent eavesdropping. The company says that the systems can spot several different types of cyberattacks.

Networks have a large number of ports, or channels through which data can flow, but companies typically use only a few to process traffic. Website traffic, for example, usually goes through port 80. SonicWall’s new firewalls promise to block cyberattacks that target ports a company doesn’t normally use to process traffic. The systems can also spot ransomware, malicious websites and other threats.

The firewalls ship with an SSL-VPN client that allows users to remotely log into business applications via an encrypted connection. There’s also support for ZTNA, a more secure alternative to VPNs. ZTNA gives employees access to only the applications they require for their work rather than the entire corporate network, which helps reduce the impact of breaches.

Administrators can configure the NSa 2800 and NSa 3800 using NSM, a cloud-based platform that SonicWall provides to facilitate centralized firewall management. The company today detailed a new release of the tool called NSM 3.0. It promises to ease day-to-day tasks such as changing the passwords with which administrators log into a firewall.

Alongside the new devices and NSM update, SonicWall today introduced an offering called MPSS that is geared toward managed service providers. Those are companies that help other organizations manage their technology infrastructure. MPSS enables managed service providers to receive help from SonicWall’s cybersecurity professionals when configuring and updating firewalls for customers. 

Image: SonicWall