Cisco ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances
The Cisco ASA 5500 Series delivers a powerful combination of multiple market-proven technologies in a single platform, making it operationally and economically feasible for organizations to deploy comprehensive security services to more locations. The comprehensive portfolio of services within the Cisco ASA 5500 Series enables customization for location-specific needs through tailored product editions for small to medium-sized businesses and for enterprises. These editions enable superior protection by providing the right services for the right location. Each edition combines a focused set of Cisco ASA 5500 Series services (such as firewall, SSL and IPsec VPN, IPS, and content security services) to meet the needs of specific environments within the enterprise network. By ensuring the security needs of each location are met, the overall network security posture is raised.
The Cisco ASA 5500 Series helps businesses more effectively and efficiently protect their networks while delivering exceptional investment protection through the following key elements:
- Market-proven security and VPN capabilities-Full-featured, high-performance firewall, intrusion prevention (IPS), content security, and Secure Sockets Layer/IP Security (SSL/IPsec) VPN technologies deliver robust application security, user- and application-based access control, worm and virus mitigation, malware protection, content filtering, and remote user/site connectivity.
- Extensible services architecture-Taking advantage of a modular services processing and policy framework offered by the Cisco ASA 5500 Series, businesses can apply specific security and network services on a per-traffic-flow basis, delivering highly granular policy controls and a wide range of protective services with streamlined traffic processing. The efficiencies of this policy framework, as well as software and hardware extensibility through user-installable security services modules (SSMs) and security services cards (SSCs), advance the evolution of existing services and the deployment of new services without requiring a platform replacement or performance compromise. With these capabilites, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series provides the foundation for highly customizable security policies and unprecedented services extensibility to help protect against the fast-evolving threat environment.
- Reduced deployment and operations costs-The multifunction Cisco ASA 5500 Series allows for platform, configuration, and management standardization, helping to decrease the costs of deployment and ongoing operations.
Introducing the Cisco ASA 5500 Series
The Cisco ASA 5500 Series includes the Cisco ASA 5505, 5510, 5520, 5540, 5550, and 5580 Adaptive Security Appliances-purpose-built, high-performance security solutions that take advantage of Cisco expertise in developing industry-leading, award-winning security and VPN solutions. The series builds upon proven technologies from Cisco PIX 500 Series Security Appliances, Cisco IPS 4200 Series Sensors, and Cisco VPN 3000 Series Concentrators. Designed as a key component of the Cisco Self-Defending Network, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series provides proactive threat defense that stops attacks before they spread through the network, controls network activity and application traffic, and delivers flexible VPN connectivity. The result is a powerful multifunction network security appliance family that provides the security breadth and depth for protecting small and medium-sized business (SMB), enterprise, and service provider networks while reducing the overall deployment and operations costs and complexities associated with providing this new level of security.
Through its unique Modular Policy Framework (MPF), the Cisco ASA 5500 Series brings a new level of security and policy control to applications and networks. MPF allows businesses to adapt and extend the profile of the Cisco ASA 5500 Series through highly customizable, flow-specific security policies tailored to application requirements while providing performance and extensibility through user-installable SSMs. This adaptable architecture enables businesses to rapidly deploy security services when and where they are needed, such as tailoring inspection techniques to specific application and user needs or adding additional intrusion prevention and content security such as those delivered by the Adaptive Inspection and Prevention (AIP) and Content Security and Control (CSC) SSM. Furthermore, the modular hardware architecture of the Cisco ASA 5500 Series along with flexible MPF enables the integration of future network and security, extending the outstanding investment protection provided by the Cisco ASA 5500 Series, and allowing businesses to adapt their network defenses to new threats as they arise.
All Cisco ASA 5500 Series appliances include maximum IPsec VPN users on the base system; SSL VPN is licensed and purchased separately. By converging SSL and IPsec VPN services with comprehensive threat defense technologies, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series provides highly customizable network access tailored to meet the requirements of diverse deployment environments while providing advanced endpoint and network-level security.