Symantec offers first enterprise level Firewall for IBM eServer iSeries - Symantec Enterprise Firewall for IBM eServer iSeries 270

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, May 26, 2003

Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq:SYMC) recently announced the availability of Symantec Enterprise Firewall for IBM eServer iSeries 270 running Linux. As the industry's first enterprise-class, full application inspection firewall available for the iSeries running Linux, the solution protects corporate assets and transactions by ensuring secure connections with the Internet and between networks. Symantec Enterprise Firewall for IBM iSeries enables fast and controlled connectivity, providing maximum protection against unwanted intrusion while enabling the flow of approved business traffic. Symantec plans to expand its firewall support to other IBM iSeries offerings over the course of this year.

Symantec Enterprise Firewall for iSeries includes a hardened Linux operating system, with the application, designed to provide users with a virtual firewall appliance to run directly on one of the logical partitions (LPAR), specific to the iSeries. This design enables flexibility and resource sharing for a more simplified, manageable, and secure environment. By integrating full application inspection, application-layer proxies, stateful inspection and packet filtering into a unique hybrid architecture, Symantec Enterprise Firewall for iSeries ensures that the information entering and exiting the corporate network is thoroughly inspected at all levels--for increased security and control, at the speed today's networks demand.

"With its integrated software, capacity by the day and rock-solid reliability, the IBM eServer iSeries offers customers the tools they need to respond to the world of on demand business," said Joann Duguid, vice president, IBM eServer SMB. "The ability to run Symantec Enterprise Firewall directly on an iSeries logical partition now gives our customers an even greater level of e-business security."

"Protecting the IBM iSeries used to require a separate firewall server or appliance," said Greg Gotta, vice president, product delivery, Symantec Corporation. "With the introduction of Symantec Enterprise Firewall for IBM iSeries, organizations can improve total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for a separate firewall server or appliance and its associated management software or platform."

Symantec's full application inspection firewalls employ advanced security features up to and including the application layer. In the case of an attempt to employ an application in an anomalous manner, Symantec Enterprise Firewall will detect this attempt and block it by default. For example, on March 3, 2003, a remotely exploitable vulnerability was discovered in Sendmail, a widely deployed email server. Remote attackers may exploit this vulnerability by connecting to target SMTP servers and transmitting to them malformed SMTP data. Since these attacks violate parameters defined in the RFCs, no configuration changes to the default settings in Symantec's full-application inspection firewalls are required to protect against this Sendmail exploit.