Wilmington, MA - Astaro, (www.astaro.com) a Sophos company and leading Unified Threat Management provider, today announced the availability of version 8.2 of the Astaro Security Gateway. Chief amongst the over 60 new features or enhancements in version 8.2 are Application Control (Next Generation Firewall), Interactive Web Reporting and a new authentication agent. All together the new features and enhancements will dramatically improve network performance while providing increased visibility and control over the network.

The new features and enhancements in version 8.2 provide organizations with the resources they need to meet the ever-changing challenges of securing a business network. The increased control and visibility will allow organizations to make better decisions based on the company’s unique needs and network usage trends.

"As technology changes, so too must the tools organizations use to control their networks," said Jan Hichert, senior vice president, network security, Sophos. "With version 8.2 we once again ensure our customers can face current and future network and security challenges by offering the next generation of firewall technology; Application Control."

Some of the new features include:

• Astaro’s Application Control improves network visibility, blocks unwanted applications and empowers IT administrators to prioritize bandwidth usage. This information can then be used to make educated decisions that will have the most impact on the business; molding their security policy to precisely fit how their company uses the Internet. The new engine is up to 100% faster than the IM/P2P control engine in previous versions.
• The enhanced Interactive Web Reporting tool provides administrators with a superior user experience tailored to how they expect to see data and towards the information they are looking for. Administrators will be able to save customer filters and subscribe to periodical mail reports.
• The Authentication Agent allows administrators to authenticate users by name instead of IP address. This provides increased control over access in profiles and makes reports easier to read.

The Astaro Security Gateway version 8.2 includes over 60 other enhancements or new features. These include, support for 3G/UMTS USB modems, Form Hardening for Web Application Security, Web Filtering Safe Search Enforcement, enhanced virtualization support, increased IPS performance by up to 250%, SNMP v3, weighted balancing for WAN Uplink and server load balancing, group-in-group support for network groups, SSID to Access Point assignment, rebootless reconfiguration of Access Points, VPN performance increases by up to 100% and more. Additional information about features and enhancements can be found here: www.astaro.com/blog/up2date/ASG8200.

In addition to the new features available in version 8.2 of the Astaro Security Gateway, the newest edition of the flagship Unified Threat Management solution also includes a technical preview of Astaro’s upcoming Log Management product. It is integrated into Astaro Security Gateway and all users will be able to try it out for free.