SonicWALL Identifies Top Ten Online Threats, Scams and Frauds This Holiday Season

SonicWALL, Inc. , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today identified the top threats holiday well-wishers and online shoppers face this shopping season. With the holidays just around the corner, phishers, hackers and scammers are preparing for the deluge of online shoppers and well-wishers by cultivating data harvesting methods, perfecting greeting card malware and honing merchant phishing techniques. Online shoppers and well wishers can prepare for these threats by following simple guidelines and knowing the top security-related frauds and scams awaiting them this holiday season.

"We see malware and phishing attacks increase dramatically right before and right after the holidays," said Andrew Klein, Product Manager, SonicWALL. "The hectic pace of the holiday season combined with the dramatic increase in online and in-store transactions strains the attentiveness of consumers making them susceptible to scams they normally would be able to identify. Unfortunately, most consumers won't learn the extent of any damage until the holidays are over."

During the holidays, malware and phishing threats tend to show up in a variety of forms unsuspecting consumers would not expect. Malware is disguised as a multi-media Christmas greeting card from an old aunt. A phishing attack comes from UPS or an online retailer where they just completed a purchase. A Facebook "friend" nudges you to play a special holiday game. Your favorite online retailer offers you a special discount if you "click here."

To prepare consumers this holiday season, SonicWALL's Klein outlined the top ten threats for the season.

1. Online Purchases: Online transactions not only increase, they are also likely to be with vendors (i.e. retailers, shippers, etc.) you do not deal with often. If you receive an email that your "Credit Card was Denied" the best course of action is to contact the vendor directly using a phone number or email address you obtained from their website - not the rejection email. Also, type in the URL of the vendor into your browser. Do not click on a link in the email itself.
2. After Holiday Attacks: Right after the holidays, the bills arrive and, given the number of transactions, you may only glance at the charges. Don't. Carefully review all the charges and make sure you know that all are valid. This can be hard when multiple people use the same card over the holidays, but do it. Often scammers make a small charge on a card as a "proof of use". A missed charge one month can lead a really large bill of fraudulent charges the next month.
3. Greeting Cards: Millions of e-greeting cards will be sent this holiday--some of them will be scams. When you open such messages, they may want you to download a program, codec, or other "code" to see a picture. Before you do anything, stop right there. Contact the sender through some other means and find out if the card is real before you proceed. Also, consider using alternative methods for greetings like using photo sharing service to share pictures.
4. Package Delivery Services: This type of phishing threat takes the form of a friendly notice from a package delivery service letting you know that there is a problem shipping your package. Typically the e-mail message includes a few lines such as "We tried to deliver your package, but were unable to reach you. Please click here to reschedule your delivery," or "Open the attached document to see the problem". When you send a package you'll receive a tracking number. If you get an e-mail notice, don't click on a link in the email. Find the package tracking number and see if it matches the tracking number on the email. The alternative is to go directly to the delivery service web site and check the status yourself.
5. Holiday-themed videos: Using the holiday as the hook, you're certain to receive an invitation or two to watch the latest "Santa Gets Stuck in a Chimney" video by just clicking on a link. If the invitation (via email, chat, etc) is from a known friend then find out from them where the video is hosted (youtube, hulu, etc) and go to the site directly and search for the video. If the invitation is from an unknown person - delete it.
6. Social media threats: Over this past year, phishing and spam attacks dramatically increased on popular social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. With more people connecting using Facebook and Myspace, consumers may get nudges and suggestions from "friends" to view their pictures, receive some special holiday "offers" or games to play that may be malware or a phishing attack. Decide right now, who are your real friends - the people you can trust not to send you junk. Everyone else can be "friends" whose "best holiday offer ever" messages can deleted.
7. Drive by Savings: Around the holidays we may find ourselves going to web sites we don't typically visit. Some of these sites may ask you to disable your pop-up blocker to "get extra savings", when you do you may get a really great offer if you just supply your email address. The results may be a discount, but almost certainly be more email spam in your inbox. Most reputable online web sites don't need pop-up windows to make you a deal.
8. Strange Searches: The holiday season brings web searches for "dog knickers" and other less typical items and the list of web sites may be less than familiar. Following a "Christmas" search result can take consumers to a web site hosting malware. If you click on a search link and you are asked to download anything to continue to that site, stop the search immediately. If you arrive at the site and you are asked to download a "plug-in" don't. If you think the site could be legitimate then go to the web site of the plug-in vendor (Adobe, Microsoft, etc) and download the plug-in from there. Then go back to the original site and see what happens.
9. Password Requests: If you plan on tweeting about your holiday greetings or plan on use e-mail accounts from cloud-based systems like gmail or yahoo mail, take extra precaution this holiday season. Your credentials may be subject to exploits and the address books you use for sending holiday greetings from these accounts may be used for e-mail harvesting. You can protect access to these different systems by protecting your account name and password. Protect your passwords by having a different password for each different service. Don't share them with anyone, don't email them, IM them or tweet them either. And be sure to change your passwords every so often.
10. Out of Date Passwords: The biggest trick happens when your system protection is out of date or is non-existent during the busy holiday shopping season. Make sure your firewall can not only block hackers, but also, malware and maybe even spam. Keep your anti-virus, anti-spam and anti-phishing software up to date. Finally, invest in a good content filter, one that identifies and blocks bad web sites.

"This holiday season, online consumers should be wary of any e-mail or social interaction that looks suspicious. They should always check to see if the e-mail or social interaction is legitimate," said Klein. "When shopping online, know how the online merchant communicates, especially in case of shipping delays and credit card matters. Assume that e-mail that either directly asks or indirectly asks for your account, financial, or identity information is fraudulent. Lastly, double-check your credit card statement--especially in January--for incorrect expenses. With these simple steps, consumers have a baseline for protection."

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

Software Developer Eliminates Need for Nightly Backup

SonicWALL, Inc., a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced that Akorri, developer of IT virtual infrastructure management software, has deployed two SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection (CDP) 3440is and a SonicWALL CDP 5040 for the company's backup and recovery needs, eliminating the need for nightly backup windows.

"For a windows-based backup, SonicWALL CDP is the easiest thing I have ever used in ten years," said Fred McHugh, Manager of Information Technology for Akorri.

The company is currently using the SonicWALL CDP appliances for server-based backup.

"We have about twenty-five servers that need to be backed up regularly and that includes the Active Directory, Exchange 2007, several SQL databases and Linux," said McHugh.

As a small company, Akorri needed a better backup and recovery solution than its original tape-based system, which required an hour-long backup window.

"When you're a one, two or three-man IT operation you just can't get into tape-based backup and specific backup window time periods," said McHugh. "It becomes a part-time, if not a full-time job."

When McHugh started with Akorri he was faced with a cobbled together type IT infrastructure. McHugh turned to Todd Barrett, Director of Sales at CPU Sales & Services, Inc, a SonicWALL Gold Medallion Partner, for a suggestion in what to replace his tape-based backup solution with.

"I've worked with Todd at every job I've had for the last 10 years. I'm at the point where if Todd recommends a product I know he's going to be diligent," said McHugh. "I told Todd when I took this job that I just couldn't do the whole tape library route. I didn't have the time. Tapes are unreliable and you run into issues with tape failure, backup windows, inadequate technology and management is a nightmare. He showed me SonicWALL CDP and for a small business it was right in the wheelhouse of what I needed to do."

SonicWALL CDP offers the only complete end-to-end disk-based backup and recovery solution for SMBs. CDP features automatic transparent backup, user-directed restore, flexible disaster recovery options and low-touch administration. With capacity of up to 9 TB at typical 2:1 compression, GbE connectivity, RAID 5 and replaceable components, SonicWALL's CDP solutions are designed to meet today's demanding requirements for performance and reliability.

"I don't spend a lot of time administrating the solution which saves us money because I can work on other projects," said McHugh. "I don't even look at the SonicWALL CDP appliances everyday and that's really a testament to my confidence in them and how well they run."

As Akorri grows and has even more servers and data needing to be backed up, McHugh plans to add more SonicWALL CDP solutions.

"I'm pretty much committed to this model right now. If we have growth and I have to add another seven servers and needed two more terabytes of backup space I'd have no problem adding another SonicWALL CDP 5040."

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL and ConnectWise Raise Bar With Enhanced Integration

SonicWALL, Inc., a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced the company is working closely with ConnectWise towards deeper integration between the SonicWALL Global Management System (GMS) and ConnectWise Professional Services Automation (PSA) Software.

ConnectWise PSA will leverage the Web Services Application Programming Interface (API) which is part of the upcoming 6.0 release of SonicWALL GMS. GMS 6.0 is tentatively scheduled for release later in the fourth quarter of 2009. The required update to the ConnectWise PSA product is tentatively scheduled to be available sometime in the first half of 2010 at which time customers will be able to benefit from the enhanced integration options.

Via the Web Services API, SonicWALL GMS will serve up additional periodically scheduled SonicWALL-specific XML reports to ConnectWise PSA, which will associate the reports to specific customers, bundle SonicWALL reports with reports from other sources, thus - delivering key insight into network usage behavior to the customer.

In addition, SonicWALL GMS will provide detailed company and device information to the Customer Relationship Management portion of ConnectWise PSA allowing the IT solution provider customer to easily tie SonicWALL devices to company accounts. IT administrators will also be able to automate the retrieval of service contract levels and expiration dates from GMS for use in the warranty/ service renewal parts of ConnectWise PSA.

Thirdly, it will be possible for SonicWALL GMS alerts to trigger the automatic creation of trouble ticket in the Service Board part of ConnectWise PSA. GMS can generate many different types of alerts. For example, the administrator can create alerts for devices going offline or VPN tunnels going down.

"SonicWALL understands that customers do not use the Global Management System in a vacuum. In fact, many customers use a wide variety of software consoles to manage, report on, and monitor their IT infrastructure for either themselves or, in the case of Managed Service Providers, their customers. Customers also typically use a number of enterprise applications. Managed service providers and other IT solution providers use Professional Services Automation tools, such as ConnectWise PSA, to improve efficiencies in the operations of their business," said Jan Sijp, Director of policy and management for SonicWALL. "It is important that SonicWALL GMS interoperates with these other applications and this is why we developed the new Web Services API. We are confident that the upcoming tighter integration between SonicWALL GMS and ConnectWise PSA will benefit many of our IT solution provider partners who deploy SonicWALL equipment and use both SonicWALL GMS and ConnectWise PSA."

Expanded Multi-appliance Management and Reporting

The Web Services API is one of many new features available in the upcoming SonicWALL GMS 6.0 release. With GMS 6.0, SonicWALL extends appliance management beyond Network Security and Secure Remote Access to encompass Email Security and Continuous Data Protection, thereby enabling enterprises and MSPs to centrally manage an entire distributed SonicWALL security infrastructure. Features added in GMS 6.0 may include but are not limited to:

* With GMS 6.0, GMS administrators can define and push policies for Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and Email Security appliances at the device, device group, or global level. Expanding granular management coverage to the CDP and Email Security product lines greatly enlarges the applicability of GMS
* Application Firewall reporting for greater visibility into the impact and effectiveness of application firewall policies and thus increase employee productivity and efficiency of network usage
* Ability to run custom reports for secure remote access devices that allow administrators to use the raw logs collected from Aventail and SMB SSL VPN devices under management
* Support for SonicOS 5.5 extends GMS capabilities to a wider range of UTM appliance features, making the GMS administrator more productive
* An enhanced Web services API to facilitate integration between GMS and other management consoles and enterprise applications, greatly increases the productivity of the internal IT staff

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Advances Industry-Leading Enterprise-Class Email Security Solutions

SonicWALL, Inc. a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced the availability of a significant upgrade to its advanced enterprise-class email security solutions with the release of Email Security 7.2. As security threats based on email continue to increase in complexity, sophistication and volume, businesses both large and small remain at risk to spam and virus attacks capable of crippling the corporate network and greatly reducing productivity and network performance. SonicWALL's Email Security 7.2 delivers uniquely innovative email security features that are redefining the limits of security and scalability to ensure protection against these malicious and emerging threats.

Aimed towards both large enterprises and SMBs, SonicWALL's Email Security (SES) solutions are high-performance, easy to use, highly scalable and cost effective. This latest release for the SES product family delivers significantly enhanced levels of performance, effectiveness, ease of use and manageability for the entire breadth of the product line. Most notably, with the release of Email Security 7.2, SonicWALL's Advanced Reputation Management now provides effective protection against a wide variety email-borne spam and malware, including spam originating from "spambots".

According to SonicWALL's SonicLabs Threat Research team, spambots are now responsible for up to 90 percent of all spam. Spambots are automated computer programs used by "botnets", or armies of compromised computer systems ("zombies"), under a common control structure. SonicWALL is seeing massive proliferation of botnets and zombies, as spammers increasingly focus on developing techniques to avoid traditional IP reputation systems by compromising mail servers at legitimate companies and cracking webmail accounts.

As part of SonicWALL's patented multi-engine email security system, Advanced Reputation Management offers industry-leading protection against spambots, taking traditional IP reputation systems a step further by correlating and analyzing billions of data points from SonicWALL's GRID Network of email, Web and network security solutions in real time.

"SonicWALL continues to develop industry-leading email security technologies in the name of providing customers large and small with innovative, enterprise-class protection," said Edward Cohen, Vice President, Email Security Business Unit, SonicWALL. "Spammers have shifted tactics to sophisticated, multi-vector attacks, elevating spam from a mere annoyance to a serious security threat. By combining leading-edge software intelligence with our state-of-the-art SES architecture, SonicWALL is able to deliver the level of email protection organizations require amidst an ever-increasing e-mail threat landscape -- while offering ease-of-management and scalability."

"SonicWALL's new Email Security 7.2 has provided tremendous value to the business operations of a number of our customers," said Rich Buckley of NDS Tech, a SonicWALL Gold Medallion partner. "Thanks to its advanced search capabilities, we have customers consistently telling us that a significant amount of their employees' time is saved on a day-to-day basis, thanks to the technology's anti-spam features. The result is increased employee productivity across the board."

Powerful Anti-Spam and Email Protection Against Increasingly Evolving Threats ... And Much More

In addition to industry-leading effectiveness, Email Security 7.2 delivers significant additional advancements.

* Significant scalability: SonicWALL's industry leading MTA (Mail Transfer Agent) performance has been re-architected to dramatically scale the performance of our software solutions, handling up to 10,000 concurrent connections for peak traffic loads, at a compelling price point.
* Advanced search: Augmenting SonicWALL's archiving, auditing and junk box capabilities, the new advanced search feature offers speed and efficiency, and gives administrators and end-users capability to quickly and efficiently search more than one million messages per second.
* Flexible management and reporting options: New support for SonicWALL's Global Management System (GMS), standards-based syslog support, and Windows Event Viewer. These latest options augment SonicWALL's award winning Email Security GUI and standards-based SNMP support.

SES is available as an appliance, Windows server-software, as a cloud-based solution through SonicWALL partners, or as a hybrid-cloud solution with the Comprehensive Anti-Spam Service on TZ, NSA and E-Class NSA network security appliances.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Discusses VoIP Firewall at VoiceCon

SonicWALL, Inc. , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced it will be exhibiting at the VoiceCon conference in San Francisco, November 2-5, where the company will be discussing the rising use of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), how to maintain high Quality of Service (QoS) and low latency for voice traffic in a secure network environment. SonicWALL invites attendees to join them at booth #503 to view product demonstrations, join associated seminars and meet with executives to learn more about the new threats facing companies today and which questions to ask vendors when considering such voice deployments.

"VoIP has always been an area of focus for us and one that we are seeing an increasing interest in," said Patrick Sweeney, Vice President of Product Management at SonicWALL. "While it's great to see VoIP move into the mainstream, it's disconcerting to see how little thought has been attributed to securing it and other technologies associated with it. VoIP is undeniably a great cost-saver and productivity-enabler. While we encourage our customers to deploy these solutions, we also urge them to consider how to roll them in a safe and secure way in order to prevent cost-saving losses through costly network compromises."

Managing the VoIP Bandwidth Conundrum

The movement to VoIP technologies for many companies brings more traffic to already crowded networks, busy with multiple other applications and data transfers. Network managers and administrators are now asked to work to maintain security levels at an absolute maximum to ensure the integrity of the corporate network, while securing suitable bandwidth for "heavy network-usage" applications such as VoIP. Key to the success of such deployments includes the ability to prioritize applications on the network (i.e. VoIP based apps), keeping connections clean to prevent viruses and other malware accessing the network and having visibility into all network traffic to better control it.

To achieve the above, companies should plan on using an Application Firewall within the IT infrastructure, providing them with granularity to decide which apps have access to the network and which don't. Such Firewalls also ensure a clean connection is always made by allowing it to tag VoIP traffic guaranteeing it the highest priority when receiving, inspecting, assembling and accepting VoIP content and is the best path to maximizing call quality and providing network protection.

VoIP Introduces New Threats

While the expansion of digital telephony and teleconferencing in today's business has brought VoIP into the mainstream, so too has it brought new threats into the corporate environment. Not only is VoIP vulnerable to classic network threats such as SPIT (Spam over Internet Telephony), phishing, Trojans, worms and viruses; it also introduces a slew of other threats to the corporate network including Eavesdropping, Interception (or call hijacking), Denial of Service (DNS) attacks and more.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

Global Service Provider Increases Services Management Performance

SonicWALL, Inc. , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced that California-based The Integration Works, LLC, a global provider of managed technology solutions, has successfully deployed a SonicWALL® E-Class Universal Management Appliance (UMA) EM5000 solution to support 50 client companies worldwide.

"The SonicWALL UMA literally saved our MSP business," said James Carter, CTO at The Integration Works. "The UMA differentiates us from VARs that can't offer worry-free management. It also helps us generate revenues through providing our customers with recurring services as well as other SonicWALL solutions. Every quote we send out to new clients includes managed security over UMA."

The Integration Works provides management, monitoring and reporting services on approximately 200 SonicWALL appliances for 50 clients worldwide. The company applies the SonicWALL UMA solution to inventory firmware, track service expirations, reset passwords, track remote access log-ins, and generate Web usage reports.

"Web reports have been instrumental in curbing unauthorized Internet usage at many of our clients," said Carter. "Some of our SOX clients use SonicWALL UMA reporting to fulfill a portion of their Internet auditing requirements."

The SonicWALL UMA solution also eases troubleshooting of ISP issues, by enabling the company to track circuit IDs and other ISP information, along with TCP/IP settings, all in one place.

Initially, the company managed these services using SonicWALL Global Management System (GMS) software on six Windows servers. As the company grew into a global enterprise, it became appropriate to migrate to a dedicated management appliance platform.

"Because the SonicWALL UMA is built from the ground up to run GMS, it's much faster and more power-efficient than before. Replacing six Windows servers with three UMA appliances cut our infrastructure costs in half."

The SonicWALL E-Class UMA EM5000 centralizes policy management, monitoring and reporting for multiple SonicWALL appliances. To date, The Integration Works uses the UMA solution to manage SonicWALL Unified Threat Management (UTM) firewalls and SSL VPN appliances. Recent advances in the UMA platform will now enable the company to manage their customers' SonicWALL Anti-Spam Email Security appliances, as well as SonicWALL Continuous Data Protection (CDP) back up and recovery appliances.

"Because we don't have to maintain a separate OS, the SonicWALL UMAs are much easier to scale as we grow," said Carter.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Reports Inducement Grants Under NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 5635

SonicWALL, Inc., a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced that on October 20, 2009 the Compensation Committee of the company's Board of Directors approved the grants of options to purchase up to 11,600 shares of common stock with an exercise price equal to the fair market value on the grant date to a total of twenty (20) new employees of the company. These new employees were hired during the fiscal third quarter of 2009 and were hired principally as a result of in-sourcing European support operations.

Each option is a non-qualified stock option and has an exercise price equal to the fair market value of the underlying shares as of the grant date. The options vest as to 25% of the covered shares on the first anniversary of the grant date and as to 1/48 of the covered shares each month thereafter, so as to be 100% vested on the fourth anniversary of the grant date, subject to the employee's continued service. The options have a maximum term of seven (7) years.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Raises Bar for Network and Email Security

SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL), a leading secure network infrastructure company, has released updates to its advanced network and email security solutions with the announcement of SonicOS 5.5 for Unified Threat Management (UTM), Email Security 7.2 and Global Management System (GMS) 6.0. Keeping data and voice networks secure should not grind performance to a halt and many so-called "best-of-breed" security solutions may compromise throughput for security. SonicWALL is redefining the limits of security and scalability by delivering superior protection against emerging threats and enabling broader manageability without compromising performance.

"SonicWALL is committed to developing industry leading, award-winning technology that best meets the needs of our customers that transform the historical tradeoff between network performance and security," said Patrick Sweeney, Vice President, Product Management, SonicWALL. "Today we are announcing innovative features not found elsewhere in the market that make networks faster, more secure and less expensive. These announcements include new firmware for the UTM Firewall line, a major series of enhancements to our email security product line, and a new release of our Global Management System."

Comprehensive Protection and Performance

SonicOS 5.5 for the firewall product line features SonicWALL's new Active/Active UTM, enabling a higher level of redundancy and security by providing full state synchronization for all network flows between both appliances. Unique to SonicWALL, the implementation is also able to intelligently utilize the secondary appliance's computing power to increase total network throughput, thereby allowing the SonicWALL solution to process more total traffic, deal with traffic spikes and improve overall productivity. In the event of a single unit failure, all of the traffic flow is maintained while the system gracefully transitions traffic to the remaining active appliance. Utilization of the addition CPU cycles on the secondary active appliance increases throughput for Intrusion Prevention, Gateway Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware and other security functions by up to 75 percent(1). Additional enhancements of SonicOS 5.5 include:

* Multi-WAN capability allowing up to 4 WAN interfaces to be configured on any TZ, Network Security Appliance (NSA) and E-Class NSA appliance thereby providing additional Internet redundancy along with outbound load balancing
* Single-Sign-On (SSO) Scalability improvements increasing the number of authenticated users supported by SonicWALL NSA and E-Class NSA appliances
* Route-based VPN allowing administrators to configure and treat VPN tunnels as network interfaces. This configuration then allows route look-ups to determine the available paths to use for VPN traffic
* Solera Networks Deep Forensic Analysis providing logging format changes to support complementary data capture solution

"SonicWALL Unified Threat Management (UTM) already provides The Township of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, with secure, robust performance and will now run even faster with new Active/Active UTM capabilities installed," said Joshua Simon, Technical Services Specialist of MSI Technologies, LLC, a SonicWALL partner.

"By consolidating UTM security, Application Firewall, Clean VPN, Clean Wireless, and Comprehensive Anti-Spam onto one easy-to-use, affordable, high-performance-architecture UTM appliance, SonicWALL has helped us optimize Lyndhurst's productivity while reducing the expense and complexity of acquiring, deploying, operating and administering separate single-point products," continued Darren Sammartino, Technical Services Partner for MSI Technologies.

Powerful Anti-Spam and Email Protection Against Increasingly Evolving Threats

SonicWALL Email Security (SES) delivers best in class effectiveness against newly emerging and advancing threats. Spammers have shifted tactics to sophisticated, multi-vector "Spam 2.0" attacks, elevating spam from a mere annoyance to a serious security threat. Enhanced features to the new SonicWALL SES 7.2, available November 3, 2009, include:

* SonicWALL's enhanced Advanced Reputation Management system leveraging email, Web and network security solutions to block these threats before they enter the network, minimizing bandwidth consumption and improving system performance
* Easy to install and use, SES is available as an appliance, Windows server-software, as a cloud-based solution through SonicWALL partners, or as a hybrid-cloud solution with the Comprehensive Anti-Spam Service on TZ, NSA and E-Class NSA network security appliances

Expanded Multi-appliance Management and Reporting

With Global Management System (GMS) 6.0, SonicWALL extends appliance management beyond Network Security and Secure Remote Access. GMS 6.0 will also encompass Email Security and Continuous Data Protection, thereby enabling enterprises and MSPs to centrally manage an entire distributed SonicWALL security infrastructure. The new SonicWALL GMS feature and functionality release is scheduled to be available before the end of 2009, and will include:

* Application Firewall reporting for greater visibility into the impact and effectiveness of application utilization on networks allowing IT managers to determine specific policies for application usage and bandwidth consumption across distributed networks
* GMS customers typically use several other enterprise applications to manage their business including professional service automation consoles, network management tools, and accounting and CRM systems. GMS 6.0 includes a new web services Application Programming Interface (API) that facilitates integration between GMS and other enterprise applications allowing for the exchange of critical data and increasing the productivity of the internal IT staff and the efficiency of the overall business.
* Using customer reports for both SMB and Aventail Secure Remote Access devices, GMS customers can now create granular reports on who accessed what applications over remote SSL VPN connections and at what time for forensic analysis, troubleshooting and ensuring compliance with data privacy mandates. Data from these reports can be used to increases employee productivity and network uptime.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Solutions Now Rated 'Avaya Compliant'

SonicWALL, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL), a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced that its Unified Threat Management (UTM) and IPSec VPN solutions are compliant with key Internet protocol (IP) telephony solutions from Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.

SonicWALL's TZ, Network Security Appliance (NSA) and E-Class NSA series product lines combine firewall, UTM, wireless and VPN technology to deliver comprehensive protection and maximum performance to customer networks. These product lines are now compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with:

* Avaya Aura™ Communication Manager Branch 2.0
* Avaya Aura™ Communication Manager 5.2 with Avaya Aura™ SIP Enablement Services 5.2 (SES)
* Avaya IP Telephony Infrastructure using Avaya IP Office 4.2 in a Converged VoIP and Data Network

"These certifications with Avaya broaden the scope of SonicWALL's participation in the VoIP market space and validates our UTM solutions in securing networks supporting voice, video and data," said Patrick Sweeney, vice president of product management with SonicWALL. "With SonicWALL's UTM solutions, our customers have the security, control and access necessary for managing today's converged networks."

One of the companies benefiting from the interoperability of SonicWALL and Avaya solutions is Office Solutions, Inc., a business that specializes in designing and implementing converged voice and data solutions.

"Using the SonicWALL product for our interoffice connectivity and our Avaya PBX made our installation less time consuming and seamless," said Ron Mazzaccaro, vice president for Office Solutions. "It made it easy to turn up our five locations with the SonicWALL NSA product line. Everything works perfectly."

SonicWALL is a member of the Avaya DevConnect program--an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a company's investment in its network.

As a Gold member of the program, SonicWALL is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab in Lincroft, N.J. There a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is compliant with Avaya established standards. This compatibility testing process allows users to confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace their existing infrastructure--speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation costs.

"By offering compliance testing to the many innovative companies like SonicWALL who are members of our DevConnect program, Avaya promotes fully interoperable solutions that help businesses unleash powerful new possibilities," said Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations and technical alliances, Avaya. "They are able to use Unified Communications to connect employees and customers to information from wherever they are, over whatever device they have available - getting more out of their multivendor network and delivering new value to their bottom line."

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

Pharmacy College Successfully Blocks Spam and Phishing Attacks Using SonicWALL

SonicWALL, Inc. , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced that St. Louis College of Pharmacy, the oldest college of pharmacy west of the Mississippi River, is successfully using SonicWALL® Email Security (SES) software to protect the e-mail of 1,500 students, faculty and staff, while lowering total cost of security.

"Statistically year-to-year, SonicWALL Email Security has saved us tens of thousands of dollars," said Chad Shepherd, Chief Information Officer at St. Louis College of Pharmacy.

Shepherd had deployed SES as a gateway e-mail security appliance to scan and control both inbound and outbound e-mail traffic.

"It's not only paying salary for IT staff to deal with the problem, it's also the hundreds of hours lost by employees sifting through spam," said Shepherd. "SES protects us from damage by phishing and other e-mail-based attacks by identifying and stopping abnormal activity."

For example, a user's authentication credentials were recently compromised by a phishing attack. SES alerted Shepherd that the outbound e-mail rates had exceeded a predetermined threshold and automatically stopped 150,000 hacker e-mails from being sent out.

"SonicWALL has really good management tools for e-mail security," said Shepherd. "No e-mail comes in or goes out of our environment in any shape or fashion except through the SonicWALL gateway."

SonicWALL Email Security is a self-running, self-updating solution, delivering powerful protection against spam, virus and phishing attacks in addition to preventing confidential information leaks and violation of internal e-mail policy and regulatory compliance laws. Available as a hardened appliance or as Windows software, SonicWALL Email Security protects inbound and outbound e-mail for organizations from 10 to over 100,000 users.

Shepherd chose SonicWALL SES over all other vendors.

"Our primary reasons for choosing SonicWALL at the time were its superior spam filtering and ease-of-management, and its price point was really good," said Shepherd.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Announces Timing of Third Quarter Earnings Release

SonicWALL, Inc. will host a conference call and web cast to report its third quarter 2009 earnings results on Thursday, October 22 at 4:15 pm Eastern Time (1:15 pm Pacific Time).

All interested parties are invited to listen to SonicWALL Chief Executive Officer and President, Matt Medeiros, and Chief Financial Officer, Rob Selvi, present earnings results and business highlights for the third quarter of 2009, and guidance for the fourth quarter of 2009.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Expands Commitment and Simplifies Customer Programs

SonicWALL, Inc. , a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced the launch of its Customer Advantage Program (CAP), further emphasizing its commitment to provide customers with more choice, cost savings and flexibility. The new initiative, which will include the simplification and expansion of its Secure Upgrade and Unified Threat Management (UTM) Trade-up Programs, will help customers save on upgrade and competitive replacement costs across the entire product line. The new Secure Upgrade Plus offering also provides partners with the opportunity to provide clients effective protection over time with minimal hassle. SonicWALL will also reward loyal qualifying customers with preferred bundle pricing, through the introduction of a new program element, the Customer Loyalty Bundle

"We remain committed to both our channel partners and our end-users, through the delivery of great products and the introduction of industry leading offers," said Marvin Blough, Vice President of Worldwide Sales at SonicWALL. "The new Customer Advantage Program is a testament to this as we pass on savings to the user in return for a longer-term commitment from them, as well as adding new security solutions to the existing program thereby giving our partners the tools they need to protect their customers."

Recognizing previous investments they have made, the Secure Upgrade Plus offering enables customers to upgrade from their existing security solutions, while the Customer Loyalty Bundle provides preferred pricing to those who deploy multiple SonicWALL product lines.

The key features of the Customer Advantage Program are as follows:

* Expands and simplifies existing programs, offering a clear upgrade path from older SonicWALL products across the board, as well as a trade-in path from competitors' products;
* Customers purchasing the minimum subscription to services and support can save up to 50 percent on the total annual cost of that solution;
* Secure Upgrade Plus now features more SonicWALL Network Security products including the popular new TZ 200 Series, in addition to Continuous Data Protection (CDP), Secure Remote Access (SSL-VPN) and Email Security product lines;
* Additional discount pricing is available to customers participating in the Secure Upgrade Plus offering (either by upgrade or trade-in) through Customer Loyalty Bundle pricing, which is up to 30 percent less than MSRP on other appliances included in an upgrade purchase.

"The Integration Works, LLC has been a partner of SonicWALL's for more than eight years and we have always found their technology to be of the highest quality and more than meet the needs of our customers," said James Carter, CTO for The Integration Works. "This new advantage program has made it even easier for us to manage our existing customer accounts as well as open up lots of new opportunities to approach prospects as a result of the clear incentives to consider SonicWALL's solutions."

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com

SonicWALL Eases Secure Remote Access to Virtual Call Center

SonicWALL, Inc., a leading secure network infrastructure company, today announced Total Transit, Inc.®, Arizona's largest taxi service, has successfully deployed a SonicWALL® SSL-VPN 2000 to provide its remote call center staff members with easy secure remote access to virtual desktop applications.

"All you do is configure the SonicWALL SSL VPN, end users log in, click on the link and--boom--they are working," said Wade Harding, IT Manager at Total Transit.

Total Transit now has approximately 20 call center employees working remotely over the SonicWALL SSL-VPN 2000. Remote staff members log in over the VPN to a virtual call center desktop environment on a terminal server as easily and securely as if they were in the office.

"We were looking for both security and ease of use," said Harding. "I've tried other VPN solutions from Microsoft and RSA that were either too insecure or too complex."

In the initial phase, the company will direct voice traffic over landlines, and subsequently begin migrating traffic to a Voice over IP (VoIP) platform. The SonicWALL SSL-VPN 2000 enables the at-home teleworkers to establish secure access to call center applications remotely over a virtual private network (VPN).

"The data side works perfectly over the SSL-VPN," said Harding.

The end user does not need to install, configure or update any client software, because secure access is clientless and takes place through a standard Web browser.

"I've gotten several compliments on how easy the SonicWALL SSL VPN is to use from people around the organization," said Howard Bannerman, Network Support Specialist at Total Transit. "It is also great that I don't have to get too technical with the end users over the phone to get them set up, like I would with IPSec VPN configurations."

The SonicWALL SSL-VPN 2000 solution enables the company to apply the remote employees' personal computing equipment instead of purchasing and powering in-house inventory, while at the same time providing workers with greater job satisfaction and reducing turnover. It also provides more flexibility in staffing by enabling IT to have a fill-in worker up and running from anywhere at a moment's notice, as well as freeing the company to add staff regardless of any space limitations at their facility. In addition, the company's executive management staff also takes advantage of the SSL VPN for secure remote access to company resources from home or on the road.

The SonicWALL SSL-VPN 2000 provides mid-size organizations with a powerful, easy-to-use and cost-effective secure remote access solution that requires no pre-installed client software. Utilizing only a standard Web browser, users can easily and securely access applications, e-mail, files, intranets, remote desktops, servers and other resources on the corporate LAN from any location. SonicWALL SSL VPN solutions integrate seamlessly into virtually any wired or wireless network topology to deliver powerful, scalable and affordable remote access to corporate resources.

To Purchase SonicWALL Products Visit http://www.sonicguard.com