Nokia releases network security appliance

Nokia has announced the availability of its latest IP security appliance products Nokia IP290 and Nokia IP690 to the Australian enterprise market after launching the suites globally earlier in the year.

Nokia security appliances are claimed to detect and block network perimeter threats directly competing with the likes of Cisco and Juniper. It also aims to protect the increasing mobile usage among workers.

Brad Reed, marketing manager at Nokia Enterprise Solutions A/NZ said Nokia has provided business security applications for at least six or seven years after acquiring various Silicon-Valley start ups.

“We build the Nokia-Siemens network which supplies the network for Vodafone and Optus here. It makes sense to understand what’s happening in the network and security space to protect our customers,” Reed told SC.

Nokia IP290 is a multi-purpose security platform for small and branch offices that require enterprise capabilities, remote management, and reliability while Nokia IP690 offers multi-core and multi-threading architecture for processor-intensive security applications. The latter also offers expandability features for future business planning, according to Nokia.

Furthermore, the hardware has been altered in design extending the product life from two years to an average of five years, claimed Nokia.

According to Reed Nokia builds the principal hardware and operating system but the customer has to buy a bundled security package from a partner either Checkpoint or Soucefire in order to receive an end to end security solution.

“We don’t supply complete n2n solution we partner with best of breed partners to provide it,” said Reed. “Principally we will provide the traditional firewall at the network perimeter only.

However, experience in the security field will see encryption and security protocol built in to future mobile phones, he added.

Nokia IP290 and Nokia IP690 are available now starting at US$3,995 and US$29,995 respectively and currently available from Australian resellers.