New SonicWall NSsp 15700 Firewall: Security for Modern Enterprises

When it comes to solving business challenges, enterprises are generally eager to adopt new technologies, such as cloud computing, workforce mobility and automation. But now, many enterprises are finding their digital transformation journey laden with new challenges, including a surge in the number of connected devices, millions of encrypted connections, increased bandwidth needs, continually evolving evasive attacks and increased operational costs. On top of that, the uncertainty accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic has just redefined something as basic as the way work gets done.

To solve these challenges, enterprises want to deploy best-of-breed technologies while minimizing costs. However, many point products in the market pose challenges of their own, including management complexity, lack of interoperability, complicating or preventing unified security, and compliance requirements necessitating multiple appliances. All of these can lead to an explosion in overall operating costs.

Introducing SonicWall NSsp 15700: a NGFW for Enterprises, Government, Higher Ed & MSSPs

The SonicWall Network Security Services Platform (NSsp) 15700 is a next-generation firewall (NGFW) with multiple 100/40/10Gb interfaces that can process millions of connections. Its high-speed connectivity and large port density — coupled with superior IPS and TLS1.3 inspection support — make the new NSsp 15700 is an ideal threat protection platform for enterprise internet edge and data center deployments. And the newly introduced multi-instance capability (modern multi-tenancy) allows MSSPs and enterprises to provide guaranteed performance, reliability and availability while adhering to service level agreements.

SonicWall NSsp 15700 combines validated security effectiveness and best-in-class price performance in a high-end, multi-instance-capable next-generation firewall.

What’s New

High-speed connectivity with built-in redundancy

NSsp 15700 is an energy-efficient, reliable appliance in a compact 2U chassis. Powered by the next-generation SonicOSX 7.0 operating system, it is capable of processing millions of encrypted and unencrypted connections to deliver the uncompromised security required for large organizations.

The high-port-density NSsp 15700 includes 6x100GbE, 4x40GbE and 16x10GbE interfaces. It features a dedicated management port, 960GB of built-in storage, and redundant PSU and fans.

Specifications at a glance:

• Up to 82Gbps of threat prevention performance
• Up to 85Gbps of application inspection performance
• Up to 21Gbps of TLS inspection performance
• Up to 80 million stateful and 50 million DPI connections
• 100/40/10GbE interfaces
• Redundant power supply and fans

Powered by the new SonicOSX 7.0

The SonicWall NSsp 15700 is powered by SonicOSX 7.0, a new operating system built from the ground up to feature a modern user interface, intuitive workflows and user-first design principles. SonicOSX 7.0 provides multiple features designed for enterprise-level workflows, including support for TLS 1.3 encryption standard and Unified Policy, which brings Layer 3 and Layer 7 access and security under a single policy. SonicOSX 7.0 also introduces multi-instance architecture — including complete tenant isolation, resource reservation, and firmware and configuration management options — allowing MSSPs and organizations to offer multiple firewall instances on a single hardware appliance.

Major features:

• Unified policy
• Multi-instance architecture
• Security services profiles
• Configuration audit and change management
• New application framework
• Enhanced APIs
• New dashboards for device, network, application, threats and Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
• Notification center providing actionable alerts
• Consistent look and feel between firewall and Network Security Manager (NSM)
• Usage statistics for rules, objects and services

More details about the new SonicOSX 7.0 can be found here.

Unified Policy for modern enterprises

With Unified Policy Layer 3 to Layer 7, access and security controls are combined in a single policy to reduce rule management overhead and provide a centralized location for policy configuration. Security services like Gateway Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), Intrusion Prevention and Geo-IP Filtering can be enforced per policy to provide greater flexibility for enterprises.

The SonicWall NSsp 15700 features an intuitive interface of contextual security policies and actionable alerts, all manageable with point-and-click simplicity. This helps administrators reduce configuration errors and deployment time, improving overall security posture. Views such as “shadow rules,” “active and inactive,” and “used and unused” help with maintaining overall rule hygiene.

Multi-instance architecture — the modern multi-tenancy

SonicWall has taken a modern approach to legacy multi-tenancy with its multi-instance, containerized architecture. This feature enables the platform to run multiple independent firewall instances on the same hardware without having to manage multiple appliances. The ability to establish degrees of separation across business units or customers helps enterprises and MSSPs meet their compliance requirements.

While traditional multi-tenancy architectures suffer from resource starvation and tenant failures that can affect other tenants, SonicWall’s multi-instance architecture shines by allowing dedicated hardware resources, independent firmware and separate configurations for its instances.

The following comparison of multi-instance-based architecture comparison with legacy multi-tenant solutions clearly illustrates the superior value of NSsp 15700 solution.

What’s more, NSsp 15700 offers huge cost savings by eliminating additional license costs for its instances and security services.

Overall Solution Value

With the introduction of the new NSsp 15700 NGFW, SonicWall continues its commitment to providing enterprise-class security at a very reasonable budget, all without compromising performance.

To learn more about the new NSsp 15700, watch the video or visit our website.

Mallik Vatti

Director of Product Management | SonicWall

As director of product management at SonicWall, Mallik Vatti is responsible for network security products, covering NSsp, NSv and Switches, as well as SD-WAN and SonicOS features. In the 15 years prior to his current position, Mallik held a variety of roles, including technical lead and network & solutions architect. Mallik holds a masters degree in computer science and a bachelors degree in chemical engineering. In addition to various industry certifications, Mallik is CISSP certified.