Drum roll please…..

The Firewall Analyzer team is happy to announce the beta release of our latest version 6.0.

There has been a lot of hustle bustle in the Firewall Analyzer team; it’s a Race to the Finish to get the Final build of our latest version 6.0 ready for release. Mean while, we have the Beta release for you to play with and shout out to us if you find any kinks in it.

Gone are the days for large enterprises struggling with Multiple Firewalls distributed across their perimeter, and are forced to install an application to monitor their perimeter devices. They had to either install it on each single device per server basis or for a cluster of devices per server.

The concept of Log analysis relies on Style of Deployment, and Style of Data management, and of course, reports on Traffic and security and many more Dynamic features offered by such an application.

Our current version, Firewall Analyzer 5.0, does all the above, presenting you with great reports and alerts for such linear deployments. However, we’ve had to think beyond these deployment styles and meet the requirements for enterprises with large geographically distributed networks.

Version 5.0 is a great piece of work capable of handling such requirements but only to an extent. It has the *conditions apply tag to it and some of those were:

1. The collection of Devices should not exceed the flow rate of 1500 logs per second to Firewall Analyzer server.
2. Requires access to each individual firewall analyzer server in the network, to manage the attached firewall device.
3. In the event of the main server crash, no data will be received from any of the devices and no alerts can be generated too.  
4. Firewall Analyzer server and the Device should ideally be deployed in the same time zone. 

Sounds Familiar? We decided it was time to get rid of the *conditions apply tag and developed a better version of Firewall Analyzer.

Sneak Peek into Firewall Analyzer 6.0

We understand that style of deployment varies on case to case basis, some might like it the linear way or some may need to look at a more distributed setup. Keeping such requirements in mind, we now have 2 editions: Stand Alone Edition and Enterprise Edition.

Some of the Top 10 features of Version 6.0

1. New set of Heterogeneous Devices & Log formats Supported
2. Interface based Live Report with SNMP support for interface details and dashboard view for last 24 hours bandwidth utilization for each interface.
3. Timezone normalization support for firewall logs based on Firewall Analyzer server timezone across geographies.
4. Spam Reports support, Top Blocked URL's report, False positive filtering for all reports and more.
5. 64 bit OS Support
6. Exporting & Importing of Report & Alert Profiles
7. Re branding FWA web client logo, images and links.
8. Option to Manage/UnManage device(s) license(s).
9. Option to export Live Report in PDF format
10. SMS Alert notification for Alert module.

Ok if this hasn’t whetted your curious minds, shoot us an email at fwanalyzer-support@manageengine.com to get the download links for the Beta release.

Or Just Use this form

P.S: This post has been co-authored by Shri (shrishankar@zohocorp.com), our very own support guru!

In today's uncertain economic climate we are left trying to figure out how best we can manage our resources till we are sure of a rebound from this global financial crisis. Every small saving is a step towards saving our future growth. Budgets are getting slashed, spending tightened and every IT administrator is scrambling to reduce their IT expenditure. A huge dent on IT budgets is internet bandwidth costs and there is never enough amount of bandwidth for an enterprise. In such tough economic scenario maximizing our resources is the key to sustaining ourselves; IT Administrators can do so by having better control on bandwidth usage. Being aware of how the bandwidth is being utilized and by eliminating any non-business usage or high bandwidth intensive applications, IT administrators can go a long way in reducing their bandwidth costs.

For example in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), bandwidth charges are significantly higher and as shown below, even a little judicious usage of bandwidth can lead to considerable savings.

• Average cost of Bandwidth in KSA ~ $40 per GB
• Average number of Business Days per month = 25 Days
• Worst case Scenario:

If 1 GB of Bandwidth is saved per day, then 25 GB is saved per month.

Bandwidth Cost Savings: 25 GB × $ 40 = $1000 per month.

These savings could potentially be much higher when deployed in real life environments. Now you must be thinking how do we implement this? Let me assume you already have an IT infrastructure in place with Firewalls included in your network. Firewall Analyzer is a solution that lets you figure out the bandwidth usage patterns in your network as a result you can effectively make changes to your IT policies to ensure judicial usage of bandwidth thereby reducing bandwidth charges.

When deployed, Firewall Analyzer can generate reports to display the top websites that are accessed by the network. Also it displays the top hosts/users/protocols that use the bandwidth most. This enables Network Administrators to determine any rogue site which is causing a bandwidth hog or any user who maybe using the bandwidth for non-business use and thereby gives control over the usage. This information can enable a network administrator to block any unwanted websites from their network which are taking up excessive bandwidth. Therefore you can effectively control your bandwidth usage which automatically translates into cost savings.

Here's a case study that illustrates how Firewall Analyzer helped Professional Engineers Ontario, Canada gain control of their Bandwidth usage. This provides a real life example of the challenges faced by the organization and how effectively their bandwidth usage was controlled on implementing Firewall Analyzer. More info about ManageEngine Firewall Analyzer can be found at http://www.fwanalyzer.com.