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SonicWall’s Consistent Value, Cyber Security Effectiveness Earn ‘Recommended’ Rating from NSS Labs

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For far too long the modern organization has been told it must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars (or even millions) for powerful, enterprise-grade security.

But for more than 25 years, SonicWall’s mission has been to deliver consistent value and powerful cyber security for organizations of all sizes and budgets. For the fifth time since 2012, this has been validated by one of the most trusted, fact-based organizations in the industry: NSS Labs.

In its 2018 group test of next-generation firewalls (NGFW), NSS Labs strongly positioned SonicWall and the NSa 2650 firewall in the upper-right ‘Recommended’ quadrant of the 2018 NSS Labs Security Value MapTM (SVM).

“NSS Labs is committed to independent testing that helps enterprises make informed cybersecurity decisions,” said NSS Labs CEO Vikram Phatak in SonicWall’s official announcement. “With ‘Recommended’ ratings for five years, SonicWall next-generation firewalls are an excellent choice for any company seeking devices with strong security and consistent product quality to evolve their security architectures. We applaud SonicWall’s focus on product consistency and security effectiveness.”

This year’s in-depth firewall comparison was comprised of totals based on security effectiveness, block rates, stability, performance, product purchasing price, maintenance, installation costs, required upkeep, management and installation. In its head-to-head comparison tests, NSS Labs verifies that NSa 2650:

  • Remains one of the highest-rated and best-value NGFWs in the industry, with a 98.8 percent security effectiveness rating
  • Delivers second-best total cost of ownership (TCO) with $4 per protected Mbps
  • Tested 100 percent effective in countering all advanced HTTP evasion, obfuscation and fragmentation techniques
  • Earned 100 percent ratings in stability and reliability testing

Many factors are taken into consideration when weighing vendor options, measuring security efficacy and calculating TCO.

Security Effectiveness of Firewalls

NSS Labs conducts one of the industry’s most respected, comprehensive and fact-based validation programs for a full range of cybersecurity products, including network and breach security, endpoint protection, cloud and virtual security, and more.

For this year’s comparison test, the SonicWall NSa 2650 next-generation firewall was compared against other industry offerings. During the NSS Labs evaluation, SonicWall NSa 2650 endured thorough testing exercises via the NSS Exploit Library, which exposed the appliance to more than 1,900 exploits.

To ensure real-world testing conditions, NSS Labs engineers utilize multiple commercial, open-source and propriety tools to launch a broad range of attacks. SonicWall NSa 2650 blocked 98.8 percent of all attacks was 100 percent reliable during testing. SonicWall also was successful in countering 100 percent of all advanced HTTP evasion, obfuscation and fragmentation techniques.

The SonicWall NSa 2650 strong security effectiveness and findings within the NSS report are applicable to the entire SonicWall NSa next-generation firewall series.

Total Cost of Ownership for Firewalls

“SonicWall offers the second-lowest TCO with $4 cost per protected Mbps.”

The cyber security industry’s pricing models are, frankly, out of date. Too many legacy vendors believe their old way of doing business — charging hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars — is beneficial to end customers and prospects. In some cases, high-end hardware is required, but there should also be powerful, cost-effective options for today’s business.

SonicWall understands and embraces this change.

It’s the reason we continually monitor and refine our pricing structures to ensure every organization is able to protect themselves from today’s most malicious cyberattacks. And we’re proud to say that NSS Labs found SonicWall to offer the second-lowest TCO with $4 cost per protected Mbps.

NSS Labs calculates TCO across a three-year period. At a high level, the formula includes:

  • Year 1 Purchase Price
  • Year 1 Installation & Labor
  • Year 1 Maintenance Costs
  • Year 2 Maintenance Costs
  • Year 3 Maintenance Costs

According to NSS Labs, “Calculations are based on a labor rate of $75 (USD) per hour and vendor-provided pricing information. Where possible, the 24/7 maintenance and support option with 24-hour replacement is used, since enterprise customers typically select that option. Pricing includes one enterprise-class CMS to manage up to five devices.”

As a best practice, enterprises and security-conscious organizations should include TCO as part of their NGFW evaluations, including:

  • Acquisition costs for NGFW and a central management system (CMS)
  • Fees paid to the vendor for annual maintenance, support and signature updates
  • Labor costs for installation, maintenance and upkeep

6 Reasons to Switch to SonicWall Capture Client from Sophos Intercept X

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While Sophos claims to be a leading next-generation antivirus solution, are they really able to protect your organization’s endpoints — not to mention the rest of your network ­— in today’s threat landscape?

SonicWall Capture Client, powered by SentinelOne, was designed to deliver stronger security with better functionality against ransomware and other advanced cyberattacks. Explore these six key reasons to switch to SonicWall Capture Client:

  1. Certified for business.
    Although Sophos Intercept X is recommended by NSS Labs, it is not certified by OPSWAT and AV-Test. SentinelOne, the core engine within Capture Client, is also recommended by NSS Labs and has certifications for OPSWAT and has AV-Test certifications for corporate use. Capture Client is also compliant with HIPAA and PCI mandates.
  2. True machine learning.
    Sophos only leverages machine learning as code executes on a system. In contrast, Capture Client applies machine learning before, during and after execution to reduce the risk of compromise to your endpoints, thereby better protecting your business.
  3. Real remediation.
    Sophos Intercept X relies on the Sophos Cleaner to restore potentially encrypted files. Not only can it be bypassed, but it is limited to using 60 MB of cache to save up to 70 “business” file types. Capture Client creates shadow copies of your data, which does not discriminate on size or file type. Capture Client rollback capabilities revert the impact of a malware attack, leaving the device clean and allowing the user to continue working — all without any risk of further damage.
  4. Firewall synergies.
    Although Sophos Endpoint Protection is closely linked to their next-generation firewall, this integration is lacking on Intercept X. Capture Client goes beyond the endpoint and has built-in synergies with SonicWall next-generation firewalls (NGFW). Although not required, when combined with a SonicWall next-generation firewall, it can enforce use of the client and redirect non-Capture Client users to a download page to update the endpoint.
  5. Easy digital certificate management.
    With more than 5 percent of malware using SSL/TLS encryption today, the inspection of encrypted traffic is vital. Sophos firewalls have limited SSL/TLS decryption capabilities, nor do they offer automated re-signing certificate distribution. Capture Client makes it easy to install and manage re-signing digital certificates required for SSL/TLS decryption, inspection and re-encryption.
  6. Better roadmap.
    In September 2018, SonicWall will add network sandboxing. Capture Client will be able to route suspicious files to the award-winning, multi-engine Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) cloud sandbox service to more forcibly examine code in ways an endpoint can’t (e.g., fast- forward malware into the future). Administrators will be able to query known verdicts for the hashes of their suspicious files without having to upload them for analysis.

If you’d like to see for yourself the difference Capture Client makes over a limited and aging endpoint solution, contact us or ask your SonicWall partner representative for a one-month trial. Existing customers can log in to MySonicWall to begin the trial today.

 

Ready to ditch Sophos?

Strengthen your security posture today. Switch now and receive up to 30 percent* off of SonicWall Capture Client endpoint protection. It’s the smart, cost-effective approach for extending security to endpoints that exist outside of the network.

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Avoid Making a Costly Network Security Shortlist Decision

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Living the life of a chief security officer (CSO), chief information security officer (CISO) or any title with the word “security” in it nowadays is surely a heart-wrenching experience each day. Far too often, yet another data breach in the news reminds you of the obvious notion that it’s not a matter of if but when you’ll be called upon to manage and contain a security incident in your organization. Regardless of its depth and severity, this has to be very disturbing and there seems to be no end. As a result, you find yourself regularly worrying if you’ve done a thorough job at vetting your cyber-defense system, and determining if it is really doing its job to prevent avoidable attacks on your networks. You understand the stakes. If any part of your security strategy is not functioning at its optimal level, you know your organization is susceptible to countless security risks. The bottom line is you don’t ever want to stand in front of the executives explaining why the company is breached, and dealing with the after-math as a result of a failure in one or more of your security layers. There is a way, however, to help you avoid such a disaster.

Limited resources and shortage of security staff can constrain your ability to carry out a rigorous vendor vetting process. The fundamental question then is what alternatives are there to help you efficiently select potential technologies that can put you in a position of strength and success against evolving threats. As a security leader, you’ve been down this road many times. You‘re aware that choosing the right technology partner with capable solutions to support your security strategy for the long-term is one of the most nerve-wracking but crucial task you must undertake. The range of capabilities and factors impacting your choice are overwhelming. You understand very well that making a poor choice could end up costing your organization millions in breach remediation expenses, immeasurable brand damage, loss of public confidence and possibly even your career. To help avoid such a costly decision when shortlisting possible vendors and their solutions for proof of concept (PoC) consideration or making the purchase, there are highly specialized market research companies that are well-recognized by the security industry for their reputable and impartial validation of network security quality and effectiveness that you can confidently use when making your selections.

The difficulty here is that there are many market research companies available. Most have specialization in a variety of technologies including network security. And to make things a little more complicated, each has it its own definition, criteria and approach to how vendors are evaluated and graded for their security effectiveness, performance and cost of ownership. The results often vary among them especially those that are vendor-sponsored research. Subsidized research and testing are always skewed to make one vendor’s product more favorable than its rival. And as such, these kind of reports lack objectivity, are seldom reliable from a technical perspective, and should not be viewed as serious research. So who should I depend on? Who do I need to stay clear of? Should I trust its finding completely? Where do I start? These are some good questions to help set clear direction and decision points. From our point of view, a good place to start is to give greater attention to independent research companies that are self-funded, has zero connection to any one vendor and focus exclusively on cyber-security. More importantly, you would also want the research to be fully verified by extensive public testing using different permutation of actual real-world use cases that best match your unique security environment requirements.

One particular company has differentiated itself in the IT security category over the past few years: NSS Labs. It is now broadly recognized as the world’s trusted authority in providing unbiased, independent, security product test reports and security intelligence services. NSS Labs reporting can help you shortlist vendors and their products based on empirical laboratory test results as opposed to fuzzy marketing, product surveys, opinion based analysis and/or peer-to-peer recommendation. The NSS Labs Test report is the ultimate validation of network security performance, resiliency and efficacy under various network traffic mixes and loads that mimic real-world use cases.  Download a free copy of the NSS Labs Test Report to gain knowledge of key performance indicators essential to the success of your cyber-defense strategy.

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