Stonesoft Releases New Version of Firewall and VPN

June 20, 2002 -- Enterprise-level security software provider Stonesoft Corporation (Stonesoft.com) announced this week that it has released version 2.0 of its flagship product, the StoneGate High Availability Firewall and VPN solution.

StoneGate 2.0, says Stonesoft, includes additional features and enhanced performance as well as support for static IP multicast routing.

IP multicasting, used by video conferencing applications and real-time data streams, says Stonesoft, has made it difficult for organizations to maintain security. StoneGate 2.0 enables static routing of IP multicast traffic through the firewall, without requiring tunneling protocols.

Incorporating the ability to easily upgrade remote firewalls, StoneGate creates what Stonesoft calls a "software appliance."

"The software appliance approach greatly reduces installation time and effort," said Esa Korvenmaa, CEO of Stonesoft. "Instead of the usual two-day installation to install, configure and harden the OS, then the firewall, then the patches, then the clustering software, firewall administrators can simply install everything in a matter of minutes from a single CD."

StoneGate 2.0 also supports virtual local area network (VLAN) tagging, allowing customers who use the IEEE 802.1q standard in their switches and network infrastructure to use it with their firewall as well. The software approach, says Stonesoft, also allows several hundred VLANs to be configured in one location for an entire cluster.