Toshiba is shipping updates to its Magnia line of firewall/security devices for the small and medium business (SMB) market that run Astaro Security Linux. Toshiba's Linux-based security server devices previously deployed a Red… Hat based Linux implementation engineered in-house.

(Click for larger view of Toshiba Magnia SG30

The Toshiba Magnia devices are based on commodity PC components and the x86 architecture, enabling them to deploy an essentially unmodified version of Astaro Security Linux on the new appliances, according to Astaro Applications Engineer and OEM Liason Guyton Thorne.

Toshiba's Magnia line comprises the SG25 and SG30, which share a chassis similar in size to a Toshiba laptop, and the Z310, available in rackmount and microtower configurations:

• $1,445 SG25 Office, supporting 25 users
• $2,155 SG25 Professional, supporting 100 users.
• $3,795 SG30, supporting 250 users.
• $7,795 Z310, with support for large enterprises. Load balancing, high availability, three or six NICs.

The devices include heuristic spam blocking, and Radius and LDAP support for local and remote user authentication. Optional virus protection subscriptions are available for POP3 and SMTP email accounts. Optional URL blocking allows organizations to block non-business related content in 58 categories.

Astaro says its stateful packet-inspecting firewall software enables the Toshiba devices to guard against denial-of-service attacks such as SYN and UDP floods, Smurf, Trinoo, and IP spoofing. VPN support comprises “all standard authentication methods” for IPSEC, plus PPTP with strong 128-bit encryption. VPN throughput is 115 Mbit/s using IPSec encryption, while firewall throughput is 735 Mbit/s.

Astaro Security Linux attempts to enable non-Linux users to leverage the powerful features available in a number of open source packages through a Web interface with proprietary middleware.

Astaro leverages a number of open source packages, including two that Astaro contributes to financially: netfilter/iptables, the packet-inspecting firewall integrated with the Linux kernel, and SuperFreeS/WAN, an open source implementation of the IPSEC and IKE protocols for virtual private networks. Astaro is also closely involved with the squid project, which develops a caching proxy server that aims to reduce workgroup bandwidth usage by caching web images and other files.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.