F5 FirePass makes the Front Page!

Network World has an article running on their front page right now talking about our plans to improve FirePass, our SSL VPN product here at F5.

The article discusses upgrading the capabilities of the systems so that they can handle up to 20,000 concurrent users. The reason this article is so cool to me is the part where they go on to talk about the configurations this lends itself to, and the way that companies are going to be able to leverage these systems to secure their networks in different ways. It's a lot of marketing talk, I know, but there are some interesting tech tid-bits in there..honest.

Being able to use these boxen not just as a single entrance point, but as gateways to different sections of a LAN will be much more feasable for large scale networks due to their increased capacity. In this way you can be sure that people that are accessing a secure portion of the network have package xyz installed and virus scanner pqr, etc., etc. Having used such a setup, I can say that it actually works pretty well. It's a pretty interesting idea for building a secure network, too, in my opinion.

In this way you can test users for the security measures you deem they should have in place at the time they want access to the secured resources. It makes more sense to me than the headaches of people being able to access sensitive systems and the admins constantly worrying about individual users' PCs. Then there's the opposite, where access is so restrictive it's hindering due to fear of insecurity, which makes equally little sense to me. Not to mention it allows the users on the LAN more flexibility in what they can access and what they have to be running on their systems if they aren't looking to access the secure or restricted content on the network. All that and it lets me log in from home, too. What's not to like? I suppose it doesn't slice, dice or puree. Perhaps I should make that suggestion.

I still think I should be holding a grudge, though. I didn't get to go to Vegas to talk about cool technology stuff. I mean sure, I had no real solid reason to go, but should that matter? Hmmm...maybe so. ;)

#CWout