Symantec speeds appliance with AES

Symantec Corp has upgraded its line of VelociRaptor firewall and VPN appliances to support the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) for VPN security that is said to be three times faster than conventional Triple DES encryption.

Unlike DES, the federal standard which was designed for hardware, AES runs efficiently in a broad range of environments from programmable gate arrays, to smart cards, desktop computer software and browsers. And compared with the Triple DES variant that applies the DES algorithm three times, using two or three separate 56-bit keys, AES is significantly faster than commercial alternatives with similar key lengths.

The Cupertino, California-based security software provider says VelociRaptor 1.5 also has some additional proxy functions to secure video conferencing applications. The product is priced according to the number of protected systems with unique IP addresses. The appliance line will be offered in three different models retailing with a starting price of $4,500 for a 100-node license to $15,000 for an unlimited node license.

Appliances are proving popular with organizations looking to control information entering and leaving the network with full data inspection that filters traffic and integrates application level proxies, network circuit analysis and packet filtering into the gateway security architecture. Symantec's VelociRaptor line spawned from its $975m acquisition in July 1990 of Axent Technologies Inc and its Raptor firewall and PowerVPN, preinstalled on a Cobalt Networks In server running an embedded and hardened version of Linux.

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