NETGEAR UTM50-100NAS, UTM5-100NAS Powerful, True Firewall, Stream Scanning for Content Filtering

ProSecure Unified Threat Management (UTM) Appliance Reference Manual

A Powerful, True Firewall

Unlike simple Internet sharing NAT routers, the UTM is a true firewall, using stateful packet inspection (SPI) to defend against hacker attacks. Its firewall features have the following capabilities:

•DoS protection. Automatically detects and thwarts denial of service (DoS) attacks such as Ping of Death and SYN Flood.

•Secure firewall. Blocks unwanted traffic from the Internet to your LAN.

•Schedule policies. Permits scheduling of firewall policies by day and time.

•Logs security incidents. Logs security events such as blocked incoming traffic, port scans, attacks, and administrator logins. You can configure the firewall to email the log to you at specified intervals. You can also configure the firewall to send immediate alert messages to your email address or email pager whenever a significant event occurs.

Stream Scanning for Content Filtering

Stream Scanning is based on the simple observation that network traffic travels in streams. The UTM scan engine starts receiving and analyzing traffic as the stream enters the network. As soon as a number of bytes are available, scanning starts. The scan engine continues to scan more bytes as they become available, while at the same time another thread starts to deliver the bytes that have been scanned.

This multithreaded approach, in which the receiving, scanning, and delivering processes occur concurrently, ensures that network performance remains unimpeded. The result is file scanning is up to five times faster than with traditional antivirus solutions—a performance advantage that you will notice.

Stream Scanning also enables organizations to withstand massive spikes in traffic, as in the event of a malware outbreak. The scan engine has the following capabilities:

•Real-time protection. The patent-pending Stream Scanning technology enables scanning of previously undefended real-time protocols, such as HTTP. Network activities susceptible to latency (for example, Web browsing) are no longer brought to a standstill.

•Comprehensive protection. Provides both Web and e-mail security, covering six major network protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP. The UTM uses enterprise- class scan engines employing both signature-based and Distributed Spam Analysis to stop both known and unknown threats. The malware database contains hundreds of thousands of signatures of spyware, viruses, and other malware.

1-4 Introduction

v1.0, January 2010