Citrix Turbo Charges Cloud and Web Security with New NetScaler Product Line

Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) today announced immediate availability of five new Citrix® NetScaler® Application Firewall appliances designed to bring a new level of security to public and private clouds and web applications. Each of the new appliances is built on the Citrix® NetScaler® MPX™ hardware  platform, the application acceleration, load balancing and web-security system that powers thousands of enterprise datacenters and most of the world’s largest clouds and websites. With the introduction of this new offering, Citrix now provides solutions ranging from the 10 Mbps Citrix® NetScaler® VPX™ virtual appliance to a record breaking 5 Gbps with the NetScaler MPX hardware appliance - meeting the needs of small and large enterprises, managed security services providers (MSSPs) and cloud providers. In fact, the new appliances outperform throughput levels from the nearest competitor by two times across multiple performance metrics.

As more corporations consider cloud and web computing models, security tops the list of concerns. Regardless of whether companies adopt public clouds, private clouds or internal web applications, the dynamic nature of these environments make them far more attractive targets for hackers. In addition, sites that bill users for services over the web are now subject to strict new regulation from the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) which protects sensitive customer data. The combination of these trends has elevated web application firewalls from a “nice-to-have” feature, to a business necessity. The new Citrix product line enables enterprise and cloud customers to apply broad application security to both web and Web 2.0 applications, while making the cloud a safer place to do business.

“It is increasingly important to focus on security especially as companies move more toward cloud and web computing models,” Cindy Borovick, Research Vice President for IDC’s Datacenter Networks service. “With a product offering such as the NetScaler Application Firewall appliance, Citrix will have a nice play in two important adjacent markets signifying a shift for the Application Delivery market as it focuses more and more on foundational network services.”

In addition, the new application firewall models embrace the company’s unique Pay-as-You–Grow licensing model (see “Citrix NetScaler Pay-As-You-Grow Pricing Gives Customers Unprecedented Licensing Flexibility”).  This pricing model enables customers to purchase today a full-featured security solution that meets near-term performance requirements, with the knowledge that as demand grows, the network can easily be scaled up with a simple software license upgrade. The licensing flexibility, available on both NetScaler MPX hardware and NetScaler VPX virtual appliances, makes it an ideal complement to server virtualization, enabling customers to secure and scale the datacenter in the most efficient way possible.

Advanced Protection for Web 2.0 Applications
In addition to detecting and blocking application threats targeting traditional web applications, NetScaler Application Firewall incorporates advanced protections for Web 2.0 applications and services. The proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies among application developers is driving the need for more sophisticated security protections and greater native fluency of XML-based applications. NetScaler Application Firewall performs comprehensive HTML and XML security checks including:

• XML denial of service (XDoS) to protect servers from malicious XML payloads by enforcing limits on the payload structure
• Schema validation and format checks to verify proper data types on SOAP messages and XML payloads
• SQL injection and cross site scripting
• Attachment checks to block attachments with malicious executables or viruses
• WS-I basic profile compliance

“Not only are traffic rates growing at an accelerating clip, but the number of attack types is increasing such that it is nearly impossible for IT security managers to keep up,” said Klaus Oestermann, group vice president and general manager, Cloud and Networking Product Group at Citrix Systems. “Our new NetScaler Application Firewall appliances not only provide advanced security protections, but also deliver the performance and scalability levels being requested by our customers.”

About the Citrix NetScaler Application Firewall
The NetScaler Application Firewall is a comprehensive and powerful security solution that blocks known and unknown attacks against web and web services applications. It utilizes a positive security model allowing only correct application behavior, without requiring constant updates of attack signatures. The NetScaler Application Firewall is ICSA certified and provides protection against a wide array of malicious attack techniques targeting application vulnerabilities, confidential data theft, denial of service, and web site defacement. It is available on NetScaler MPX hardware appliances.  NetScaler Application Firewall is also included with the NetScaler VPX software appliance, further enhancing the company’s ability to offer cloud and web security as part of the industry’s only end-to-end networking virtualization solution.  

Pricing and Availability
NetScaler Application Firewall is now available on MPX 5500, MPX 7500, MPX 9500, MPX 10500 and MPX 12500 appliances through Citrix Solution Advisors worldwide. Pricing begins at $20,000. Pay-as-You-Grow licensing is available for MPX 7500, MPX 9500 and MPX 10500 appliances.  

Online Resources

• NetScaler product page
• NetScaler Developer Community
• NetScaler blogs
• Citrix on Facebook