Top Layer's Attack Mitigator Intrusion Prevention System Hits the Mark; The Attack Mitigator IPS 5500 Meets Top Analyst's Criteria for Effective Network Intrusion Prevention

Business Wire, Jan 20, 2005

WESTBORO, Mass. -- Top Layer Networks, the leader in high performance intrusion prevention, successfully meets Gartner's Seven Key Selection Criteria For Network IPSs. In November 2004, Greg Young, Research Director for Gartner, a leading industry analyst firm, published a report to advise enterprises on what they need to know when buying an intrusion prevention solution. The critical areas seen by Gartner as key to any IPS selection process are:

--Performance; Latency and in-line bandwidth capacity

--Research and updates

--Price

--IPS offered as part of a next generation firewall

--Management and reporting interface

--Security function

--Is it really an IPS?

Greg Young warns, "Not all intrusion prevention systems are created equally. Beware of products advertised as IPSs that are no more than IDSs, with the "D" changed to a "P" as a marketing strategy."(1) A full copy of the Gartner report is available at http://www.gartner.com/.> The Attack Mitigator IPS 5500's "non-stop protection" approach to IPS focuses on integrating the best protection, performance, management, and reliability. This approach ensures that all legitimate traffic reaches its destination, even when the IPS is busy protecting against network-level and application-level attacks.

Peter Rendall, CEO and President of Top Layer Networks said, "Protecting against today's sophisticated attacks is simple with the Attack Mitigator IPS 5500, which can be deployed to protect your network within minutes, even in networks that need the high availability of our 8.8Gbps ProtectionCluster(TM) solution. The Attack Mitigator IPS 5500 was launched in 2004 as the only IPS product to successfully integrate content-based IPS features with advanced rate-based protection and advanced firewall filters, so that content-based attacks like Sasser and Blaster can be kept off the network, while simultaneously defending against massive rate-based attacks like SYN Floods."

The Attack Mitigator 5500 uses multiple separate, real-time protection mechanisms to detect and block threats dynamically. Protection against unknown attacks, or so called "zero-day attacks" is accomplished with advanced protocol validation modules that are implemented in purpose-built hardware subsystems, including a fragment reordering engine and a deep packet inspection engine that determine whether a connection is allowed to pass through. Because the protocol validation modules do not rely upon specific exploit signatures against specific exploits, they effectively act as a network patch for unprotected vulnerabilities, even in complex asymmetric networks.

Mike Paquette, VP, Marketing and Product Management at Top Layer commented that, "Organizations looking to purchase an IPS should ensure that not only does the product block all attack traffic, but it also passes 100% of legitimate traffic, even when under extended attack or load. Because of the superior performance characteristics of the Attack Mitigator 5500, it is well suited to be deployed at any point in the network, even in a heavily-loaded high-speed backbone."

About the Top Layer Attack Mitigator IPS 5500

The Attack Mitigator IPS 5500 family offers the strongest levels of network IPS protection, performance, and reliability on the market today. By improving upon the most powerful characteristics of stateful firewall technology and intrusion detection systems, Top Layer has developed the Attack Mitigator IPS 5500 in order to protect against attacks in real-time with minimal interruption of legitimate traffic. Top Layer executes high performance, non-disruptive deep packet inspection and analysis coupled with intelligent blocking of attacks through TopFire(TM) second-generation ASIC technology and TopInspect(TM) Deep Packet Inspection. To learn more about the Attack Mitigator IPS 5500, visit www.TopLayer.com, email sales@TopLayer.com, or call 508-870-1300.

About Top Layer Networks, Inc.

Founded in 1997, Top Layer Networks (www.TopLayer.com) develops network security solutions that enable enterprises worldwide to protect their infrastructure and critical online assets from cyber-threats. The Company's patented, ASIC-based products are engineered to deliver accurate and reliable protection mechanisms while operating as robust in-line network security devices. Top Layer Networks is headquartered in Westboro, Massachusetts with sales and support presence in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

(1) Gartner Report G00123902, "Seven Key Selection Criteria for Network IPSs", author Greg Young, November 1, 2004.