Cisco Rolls Out SOHO Security Appliances

Cisco Systems has just introduced enhancements to its line of security appliances for small home office and businesses, broadband users, midrange users, and users requiring high availability.

The Cisco PIX 501 and PIX 506E -- available now priced starting at $1,395 -- for small offices and remote offices, will be enhanced to improve firewall performance by a factor of five or six, and double VPN security performance for Advanced Encryption Standard VPN environments.

The new Cisco PIX 501-Unlimited model, to be available in late April priced at $995, now enables unlimited user connections, with enhanced scalability and lowered total cost of ownership. Both the PIX 501 and PIX 506E provide security for converged data, voice, and video.

The new Cisco PIX 515E-6FE for midrange users provides six ports of Fast Ethernet, 190 Mbit/s firewall, and 140 Mbit/s VPN connections for enhanced protection of multiple DMZ and server environments requiring physical network separation. It's available now priced at $7,495. The PIX 525-2GE provides dual Gigabit Ethernet and dual Fast Ethernet ports, available now for $13,995.

The Cisco PIX 535 provides 1.7 Gbit/s firewall throughput and 440 Mbit/s Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) and AES protection with high availability priced at $29,995, available now.

The Cisco Catalyst 6503 and 6506 provide 5 to 20 Gbit/s provide IP Security (IPsec) VPN, intrusion-detection system (IDS), and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) upgrade options. The Catalyst 6500 series is available now priced starting at $59.995.

Cisco said it has won several third-party certifications for its PIX line of security appliances, including the Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4) certification, and both ICSA Labs firewall and IPSec certifications.

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