Palo Alto Networks has introduced the next-generation firewall, the PA-7050.  With next-generation firewall functions, such as full application enablement, IPS, AV and WildFir active on all traffic, the PA-7050 delivers consistent performance at speeds much higher than alternative offerings.  This superior consistency in performance empowers organizations to apply next-generation firewall security throughout their networks – from the edge of the enterprise to the datacenter – and ensures security does not become a barrier to achieving high network performance.

The amount of data travelling across enterprise networks continues to grow at a rapid rate, and enterprises need to ensure that data moves as quickly as possible to maintain business productivity.  This challenge is compounded by the need to apply next-generation security throughout the network to protect against sophisticated cyber attacks.  These attacks can hide in plain sight, using common applications to penetrate exterior defenses, and once inside a network, act like day-to-day traffic while stealing targeted data via applications such as FTP, webmail or veiled within SSL.

Common port-based firewalls, plus simple signature-based protection mechanisms masked as next-generation firewalls cannot safely enable applications; they only block them, and further cannot deliver adequate performance with these security features enabled.  The result: many organizations limit application of tight security controls, leaving their organizations at risk.

Palo Alto Networks addresses this challenge head-on with the PA-7050, a powerful, yet easy-to-extend and manage next-generation firewall that is designed from the ground up to deliver performance consistency with next-generation security controls enabled.

“The PA-7050 allows security teams to achieve two seemingly conflicting goals.  First, it provides state-of-the-art security at the application level and applies scans for attacks, malware, and exploits.  Second, because it has a unique single-pass architecture designed to optimize performance, the PA-7050 can provide all of this security capability at speeds much greater than alternatives in the market; this ensures business processes run smoothly and securely for our customers, “ says Lee Klarich, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Palo Alto Networks

As the newest member of the Palo Alto Networks family of next-generation firewalls, the PA-7050 runs PAN-OS, the operating system that is the heart of the Palo Alto Networks platform, and supports throughput speeds up to 120 Gbps for core firewall functionality.  Because of the combination of performance, scalability, and security, the PA-7050 is ideally and equally suited for:

The data center where validation of applications and users, and threat prevention at 100Gbps or more is critical.

The Internet gateway where visibility and control over all applications and protection from known and unknown threats are critical.

Internal network segments, where isolation of critical data and business functions is required.

The PA-7050 features a distributed processing architecture to provide scalable performance.  Customers requiring additional network capacity simply need to add network processing cards (NPCs) to the PA-7050 chassis.  All traffic going through the PA-7050 is automatically balanced across the network processing modules, seamlessly increasing network performance without added management overhead