Cisco ASA5510 Series Security Appliances

To remain competitive, businesses require anytime, anywhere, any-device connectivity to critical applications and information. Unfortunately, these business factors broaden the attack surface and potential for abuse. This confluence poses significant challenges for IT professionals responsible for security for the network and its applications.

Cisco ® Secure Borderless Networks enable businesses to maximize efficiency while maintaining security, visibility, and regulatory compliance; reach customers, partners, and markets that have previously been too architecturally challenging to address (Figure 1); and increase employee productivity and operational efficiency by securely connecting mobile users - while information is secured, audit trails are kept, and hackers are kept out of the network.

The Cisco ASA 5510 Series Adaptive Security Appliances and Cisco Security Manager are fundamental components of the Cisco Secure Borderless Network architecture, creating a tightly integrated solution that delivers the full suite of high-performance security appliances, sophisticated policy management, and comprehensive analysis and reporting.

The Cisco ASA 5510 Series enables businesses to deploy strong security throughout the Secure Borderless Network. The appliances integrate network firewall, application security, and attack protection into a convenient appliance form factor that delivers proven performance and reliability. Cisco ASA appliances can be extended with numerous advanced security features for remote access , intrusion prevention , content security , unified communications , and botnets . In addition, the newest member of the ASA 5510 Series, the ASA 5585-X Adaptive Security Appliance, combines the world's most proven firewall with the industry's most effective IPS-with guaranteed coverage-to offer the most effective security solution in the industry to significantly decrease business risk and address regulatory compliance. The Cisco ASA 5585-X scales to the highest VPN session counts, throughput, and connection speed and capacity to meet the growing needs of today's most dynamic organizations- all in a compact 2-rack-unit footprint.

The Cisco Catalyst ® 6500 Series Firewall Services Module (FWSM) enables businesses to segment campus networks and secure data center environments by integrating firewall security directly into the network infrastructure. The FWSM allows any Ethernet port of a Cisco Catalyst 6000 Series Switch to operate as a fully featured firewall. It facilitates departmental or multitenant deployments with optional security context licenses that deliver up to 250 virtual firewalls.

Cisco Security Manager is an enterprise-class management application that provides insight into and control of Cisco security and network devices. Cisco Security Manager offers comprehensive security management (configuration and event management) across a wide range of Cisco security appliances, including Cisco ASA Adaptive Security Appliances, IPS Sensor Appliances, Integrated Services Routers, Firewall Services Modules, and Cisco Catalyst 6000 Series Switches. Cisco Security Manager allows you to efficiently manage networks of all sizes-from small networks to large networks consisting of hundreds of devices.

The Cisco Secure Borderless Network is a comprehensive security architecture that enables business velocity while requiring minimal operational overhead. The Secure Borderless Network offers a wide range of performance points so businesses of all sizes can connect anytime, anywhere.

Cisco ASA5510 Series Security Appliances

The Cisco ASA 5510 Adaptive Security Appliance delivers advanced security and networking services for small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise remote/branch offices in an easy-to-deploy, cost-effective appliance. These services can be easily managed and monitored by the integrated Cisco ASDM application, thus reducing the overall deployment and operations costs associated with providing this high level of security. The Cisco ASA 5510 Adaptive Security Appliance provides high-performance firewall and VPN services and five integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet interfaces. It optionally provides high-performance intrusion prevention and worm mitigation services through the AIP SSM, or comprehensive malware protection services through the CSC SSM. This unique combination of services on a single platform makes the Cisco ASA 5510 an excellent choice for businesses requiring a cost-effective, extensible, DMZ-enabled security solution.

As business needs grow, customers can install a Security Plus license, upgrading two of the Cisco ASA 5510 Adaptive Security Appliance interfaces to Gigabit Ethernet and enabling integration into switched network environments through VLAN support. This upgrade license maximizes business continuity by enabling Active/Active and Active/Standby high-availability services. Using the optional security context capabilities of the Cisco ASA 5510 Adaptive Security Appliance, businesses can deploy up to five virtual firewalls within an appliance to enable compartmentalized control of security policies on a departmental level. This virtualization strengthens security and reduces overall management and support costs while consolidating multiple security devices into a single appliance.

Businesses can extend their SSL and IPsec VPN capacity to support a larger number of mobile workers, remote sites, and business partners. Up to 250 AnyConnect and/or clientless VPN peers can be supported on each Cisco ASA 5510 by installing an Essential or a Premium AnyConnect VPN license; up to 250 IPsec VPN peers are supported on the base platform.

VPN capacity and resiliency can also be increased by taking advantage of the Cisco ASA 5510's integrated VPN clustering and load-balancing capabilities (available with a Security Plus license). The Cisco ASA 5510 supports up to 10 appliances in a cluster, offering a maximum of 2500 AnyConnect and/or clientless VPN peers or 2500 IPsec VPN peers per cluster. For business continuity and event planning, the Cisco ASA 5510 can also benefit from the Cisco VPN FLEX licenses, which enable administrators to react to or plan for short-term bursts of concurrent Premium VPN remote-access users, for up to a 2-month period.