SonicWALL Business Insight

CO NS O L I DAT I O N

Enabling Data Center Consolidation with Enterprise Security Solutions

The Data Center Consolidation Scenario Data center consolidation remains among the top objectives for todays organizations, primarily because it is a proven and highly effective way to cut infrastructure costs and improve operational efficiency. Often facilitated by complementary network, server and storage virtualization projects, consolidation yields substantial savings by promoting a combination of infrastructure reduction, simplification and centralization. This means there are fewer systems to purchase, operate, and maintain; fewer differences among them; and less need for distributed facilities and personnel. Moreover, for those systems that remain, enterprise IT has the opportunity to utilize and administer them far more efficiently Other significant benefits derived from data center consolidation and IT resource centralization include reduced effort and investment needed to establish robust information security defenses and protect sensitive data; demonstrate compliance with both regional and industry-specific privacy and security regulations; and address heightened requirements for disaster recovery and business continuity. Organizations further benefit from greater IT agility and responsiveness to rapidly changing business conditions. As beneficial as consolidation can be, however, it is important for IT managers to recognize that it also presents some challenges, particularly in the areas of information security and privacy.
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network traffic at that placefar more than would otherwise be the case, in any event. This, in turn, translates into the need for high-capacity, high-performance network security solutions that not only can process and protect multiple Gbps of application traffic, but are also able to do so without introducing too much latency along the way.
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Greater access risk Having a large number of computing systems in a single location represents an increased level of risk from the perspective of providing hackers, or other ill-intentioned users, with the ability to compromise and/or access a greater number of resources and substantially more data all at once. Greater disaster risk Similarly, consolidation also represents an increased level of risk from the perspective that a single disaster or otherwise disruptive event now has the potential to impact a much greater portion of an organizations computing infrastructure.

SonicWALL for Data Center Consolidation Fully achieving the benefits of data center consolidation and resource centralization depends on having the means to address related security, privacy and performance challenges. In this regard, enterprise security solutions from SonicWALL give todays organizations exactly the capabilities they need. SonicWALL Network Security By combining a powerful Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection firewall with multiple layers of protection technologyincluding anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, and content filtering capabilitiesSonicWALL Network Security provides enterprises with a robust network security solution that is also consistent with the overall objective of achieving infrastructure consolidation and simplification. Flexible policy implementation, along with integral support for multiple network interfaces, routing protocols and VLAN capabilities, also provide the means to efficiently and effectively restore security boundaries between centralized systems with disparate trust levels, while an

Loss of isolation Systems that reside in different data centers are typically isolated from each other by intermediate security devices associated with one data center, the other, or perhaps even both. Unless special attention is paid to this issue, however, these potentially important layers of protection often get removed with consolidation, as most of an organizations computing resources are typically grouped together within a common defensive boundary. Greater capacity and performance requirements Having so much of an organizations computing infrastructure in one place translates into having a substantial amount of

PROTECTION AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS

SonicWALL Business Insight

extensive suite of high availability features helps mitigate against the greater risk posed by disasters and other disruptive events. In addition, high-speed Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection and a multi-core architecture ensure not only a high degree of scalability, but also enable thorough, zero-impact inspection for todays latency sensitive applications. SonicWALL Secure Remote Access At the same time that organizations are steadily consolidating data centers and centralizing most of their information resources, their users are becoming increasingly mobile and more widely distributed. SonicWALL Secure Remote Access appliances provide the ideal solution to this inter-woven pair of trends, combining comprehensive application access with full security, control over endpoints, and unified policy management. With SonicWALL SSL VPN solutions, both internal and external users can securely access virtually any network resource including Web-based, client/server, and host-based applications from a wide range of endpoint platforms. Advanced End Point Control (EPC) capabilities combine preauthentication interrogation to confirm endpoint security state and configuration settings with advanced data control features, such as automated purging of client-side caches and the ability to create an encrypted workspace. Mitigation is also provided

against greater access risk as administrators can set and enforce highly granular policies that effectively limit the specific resources users have access to in any given scenario. SonicWALL Application Intelligence An embedded component of SonicWALL Network Security appliances, Application Intelligence and Control is another solution that helps IT departments conquer the security implications of consolidated networks. Specifically, Application Intelligence provides detailed visibility and control of communications traffic based on the specific applications and services being used and, optionally, based on who is using them and when. This allows access control and threat inspection policies to be set and enforced on a far more granular basis than would otherwise be possible with traditional countermeasures, thereby mitigating even further the access risk issue introduced by data center consolidation and resource centralization. Bottom Line By helping IT departments mitigate related security, performance, and reliability challenges, enterprise security solutions from SonicWALL enable todays organizations to more fully achieve the substantial cost reductions and many other benefits associated with data center consolidation and IT resource centralization.

SonicWALLs line-up of dynamic security solutions SonicWALL, Inc. 2001 Logic Drive, San Jose, CA 95124 T +1 408.745.9600 F +1 408.745.9300 www.sonicwall.com

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POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

PROTECTION AT THE SPEED OF BUSINESS

2010 SonicWALL and the SonicWALL logo is registered trademarks of SonicWALL, Inc. Protection at the Speed of Business is a trademark of SonicWALL, Inc. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Specifications and descriptions subject to change without notice. 04/10 SW 930