Everybody’s on a budget, of course. Maybe you’re a small business, or a start-up. Maybe you’re a local government entity. Or, maybe you just don’t like wasting money. If you fall into any of these categories, it’s nice to know you can have state-of-the-art, top-brand security covering your back. The SonicWall TZ500 is one of those small-to-mid range firewalls that just seems to out-perform it’s pricepoint.
This is an excellent appliance easily capable of safeguarding a mid-sized network.
The TZ500 is roughly comparable to the FortiGate 80E or 80F. The TZ500 has IPS Throughput of 1 Gbps. In addition, the SonicWall TZ500 pushes 1 Gbps of Application inspection throughput. IMIX throughput is 700 Mbps, and IPSec VPN throughput is also 1 Gbps. Lastly, full DPI throughput comes in at 400 Mbps.
Features
With SonicWall, you tend to get a lot of features for your money. TZ500 offers anti-malware, anti-spyware, and intrusion prevention. Plus, you get anti-spam and protection against incoming email-based threats if you’re configured for it.
This firewall is also built to handle encrypted attacks, since it is equipped with the processing punch needed to inspect encrypted SSL connections against the latest threats.
And, if you work remotely, you’re covered too. First, remote users can set up a secure VPN tunnel back into the home network. Each TZ500 can support 25 site-to-site VPN tunnels. It also supports up to 16 SonicPoint access points.
The SonicWall TZ500 also features SonicWall’s Global Management System. This allows you to deploy and manage SonicWall firewalls in a single system at the central office.
The TZ500 comes with optional 802.11ac wireless, IPSec and SSL VPN. It also has failover through integrated 3G/4G support, load balancing and network segmentation. All of this combines advanced networking features with advanced security. It is an impressive, proven package.
The SonicWall TZ500 is pretty easy to get up and running, as are most SMB firewalls. It has set-up wizards with a powerful web interface to help with this. Just connect the WAN and LAN interfaces to the Internet and your computer, respectively. After that, turn on the firewall. Next, go to in your browser to the SonicOS Startup Guide.
Once it’s configured, the firewall keeps itself updated with the latest threat signatures. This means that small to medium-sized businesses can have a single device protecting their networks, without having to worry about updating software on every client. If the wireless 802.11ac radio is activated, then that protection can also extend to anyone using the wireless network. SonicWall offers great security for those who don’t always sit at an office desk.
…and more features!
One of the best things about SonicWall is that you can add modules, or features, as needed. It’s an a la carte approach that’s great for small to medium-sized businesses. In other words, businesses that may not need to pay for full-on enterprise level security. Nevertheless, it’s quite easy to add the modules in when you decide to.
SonicWall’s cloud-management and sandboxing is a cool feature worth mentioning. When any of the myriad SonicWall devices linked together in the cloud discovers an unknown malware, guess what it does? Shares it with every other SonicWall. So that unknown malware becomes famous to every SonicWall appliance everywhere that’s using the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection module.
And a big benefit of cloud-based sandboxing is that it’s not limited to one engine. SonicWall uses several of them, so it’s nearly impossible to create malware that could trick all of them.
SMB’s don’t generally assume they can afford this level of layered protection. But it’s nice to know it’s here. The SonicWall TZ500 is priced and powered into the higher-end of the SMB range. And with its modular feature set, it is hugely scalable. We’d love to tell you more about the SonicWall TZ500. So, why not give us a call at 877-449-0458, or reach out at [email protected]? Thanks for reading!
SonicWall TZ500 highlights
| Firewall Inspection Throughput: 1.4 Gbps |
| Anti-malware Inspection Throughput: 400 Mbps |
| IMIX Throughput: 700 Mbps |
| IPsec VPN Throughput: 1 Gbps |