A10 Networks Enhances Thunder Threat Protection System

Application networking solutions provider A10 Networks announced today the immediate availability of a new version of the Thunder Threat Protection System (TPS) solution.

Launched in early 2014, Thunder TPS is a high-performance appliance that’s designed to provide organizations network-wide protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and ensure service availability.

According to A10 Networks, Thunder TPS Release 3.1 brings improvements in areas such as programmability, mitigation, detection and visibility.

The solution’s programmable centralized configuration and management engine enables organizations to enforce security and application policies. This can be done via regular expression (regex) commands, which can be used to quickly match a search pattern to an incoming packet, or via enhanced aFleX TCL-based scripting, a functionality that provides additional options for creating customized policies, A10 Networks said.

As far as mitigation is concerned, Thunder TPS 3.1 provides rate limiting for granular control, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) for MPLS encapsulated traffic inspection, and high-performance Network Address Translation (NAT) support. The solution also provides enhanced protection against attacks leveraging TLS/SSL vulnerabilities, such as the recently discovered POODLE flaw.

In an effort to provide improved detection, Thunder TPS 3.1 introduces expanded packet statistics for enhanced traffic visibility through more than 400 global, destination-specific and behavioral counters that are available via the graphical user interface (GUI) or the command-line interface (CLI). Customers can also export granular packet statistics to third-party analytic devices at high speeds via sFlow and NetFlow, the company noted.

The GUI has been improved to make it easy for organizations to define and edit policies, and provide them with network statistics and reports, the company said, adding that the latest Thunder TPS release also brings enhanced logging functionality.

“Network and security staff will greatly benefit from the new mitigation and visibility options provided by Thunder TPS 3.1. More detailed threat analysis and updated tools help to combat the impact of DDoS attacks by preventing damage to critical online resources and the bottom line,” commented Raj Jalan, CTO of A10 Networks. “With these enhancements, A10 Networks sets the stage to provide additional correlated analytics and ease of administration, including centralized management and automatic traffic baselining features in the near future.”

Pricing for the TPS 3.1 system starts at $99,995.

In July, A10 Networks launched a new product family, Thunder SPE (Security and Policy Engine), which enables enterprises to implement security and policy enforcement functions at high speed.