Peakflow X appliance blocks zero-day threats

Arbor Networks' Peakflow X security appliance offers improvements for real-time monitoring

Version 3.6 of Arbor Networks' Peakflow X security appliance offers improvements for real-time monitoring and better protection against previously unseen or "zero-day" threats.

Arbor Networks' product manager, Eric Jackson, said, "We have an extensive enterprise customer list and we have two core Peakflow products, one for service providers and one for enterprises. In 3.6 we've added router interface visibility, which, for instance, can let you see what all your SQL servers are doing."

The previous release could identify individual systems as the sources of bad network traffic, but only supported Microsoft's Active Directory. Arbor Networks has now added support for Novell's eDirectory, said Jackson.

"We can now show your network interfaces in real time," added Jackson. "For instance, if a worm outbreak happens on port 1434 you want to know who's carrying this on the network and put your resources in the right place. And it could also help with network capacity planning by flagging up the fact that this link was running at 50 percent last year and now it's running at 80 percent – so I need to plan in the next year to upgrade this before it fills."

Other improvements have been made to the Active Threat Feed (ATF) feature to give more control to firms and enable them to manually update ATF policies created by Arbor's Security Engineering Response Team (Asert) if required.

Arbor's 2U Intel-based appliance resides in customers' networks and reports NetFlow, sFlow and NetScout probe data to Arbor's systems in the US for assessment.