An extensive security solution for peace of mind
Mistral provides both Cisco Secure PIX series and Cisco IOS firewall solutions.
As more and more business need to share information with clients, business partners and remote workers the Internet presents itself as an ideal tool. The internet is boosting the efficiency of businesses, improving communications and providing an almost never ending source of data, so it is no surprise that more and more businesses are investing in broadband internet connections allowing always-on access.
Unfortunately these benefits are not without risk. The problems come when the realization that your companies connection is not only allowing access to the Internet 24 hours a day, but also anyone on the Internet has access to you! Your network is now part of the Internet and there are people who can roam around your files and records via the same tool that has enabled your business to grow.
There have been many reported incidences of high profile corporations falling victim to hackers, some of which just want to deface the corporate website with ‘cyber graffiti’, and there are other more damaging hackers that wish to damage or even steal the privileged information that you store on your computers.
Without the standard protection offered by security devices like a firewall then these unscrupulous individuals could cause you not only inconvenience when they crash your systems but thousands if not tens of thousands in lost data, files, clients and time.
Protecting your data and your network
Mistral understands the need to protect your valuable data and we have researched the many solutions available so we can provide you with the correct recommendation for your needs. We have selected market leading, Best of Breed products that have proved them selves over and over again. Along with our highly trained engineers Mistral can provide you with a complete service to protect your network from the risks that many have fallen foul too already.
A firewall not only provides hacker protection and access control, it can provide other much needed tools to assist in the security of you corporate network. Although a firewall protects the data within the network, the data that you send to your business partners and remote workers is visible to anyone how wishes to look. This is the reason why Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are now a standard feature on most firewalls.
The VPN feature on a firewall allows communications of highly sensitive data across the open Internet by encrypting from site to site. You can not only send data to other firewalls of the same make but to anyone using an IPSec VPN tool, allowing much greater potential for secure communications.
Other features such as content checking of emails and websites is a regular option with some of the firewall solutions along with tools such as bandwidth management and antivirus.
Mistral Cisco firewall solutions – providing complete cover
The Cisco Secure PIX Firewall series delivers strong security in an easy-to-install, integrated hardware/software appliance that offers outstanding performance. The series allows you to rigorously protect your internal network from the outside world—providing full firewall security protection.
Unlike typical CPU-intensive full-time proxy servers that perform extensive processing on each data packet at the application level, Cisco Secure PIX Firewalls use a non-UNIX, secure, real-time, embedded system. The Cisco Secure PIX Firewalls deliver superior performance of up to 250,000 simultaneous connections, over 6,500 connections per second, and nearly 170 megabits per second (Mbps) throughput. This level of performance is dramatically greater than that delivered by other appliance-like firewalls or those based on general-purpose operating systems.
With market-leading performance , the Cisco Secure PIX Firewall creates little to no network performance impact. The product enforces secure access between an internal network and Internet, extranet, or intranet links completely concealing the architecture of an internal network from the outside world. In addition, Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections using the IPSec standards can be made with the Cisco Secure PIX Firewall.
The Cisco IOS Firewall feature set is a security specific option for Cisco IOS software enabling network managers to configure a Cisco router as a firewall. It adds greater depth and flexibility to existing Cisco IOS security solutions, such as authentication , encryption, and failover, by delivering state-of-the-art security features such as stateful, application based filtering; dynamic per-user authentication and authorization with defence against network attacks, Java blocking and real-time alerts.
Available as an optional extra on all Mistral services featuring a Cisco router, the IOS Firewall offers sophisticated security and policy enforcement using your existing Cisco device.
Comprehensive security and control
- Real-time embedded operating system providing stronger security than standards based operating systems
- Resides between the corporate network and Internet access router
- Cut-through proxy architecture providing highest authentication performance in the industry
- Protective scheme is based on the Adaptive Security Algorithm (ASA) providing stateful inspection for all TCP/IP sessions
- Up to 256,000 simultaneous connection support
- Supports hundreds of protocols
- 24 hour network monitoring and fault detection
- Multimedia application support – requires no special client configuration
- IETF IPSec support enabling VPN interoperability and scalability
- Provides URL filtering capability with full reporting/auditing
- Java Applet Filter stops potentially dangerous Java applications on a per client or per-IP address basis
- Failover / hot standby upgrade option for resilient firewall operation
- Provides third-party validation of security strength - ICSA certified, security audit from SRI , NSA Common Criteria certification pending
- Alert and alarm notification via Email and pager
