|
•
|
Scalability and Data Accessibility Enhancements—The following enhancements are included in this release:
|
|
•
|
Visualization, Usability and Workflow Enhancements: Application Visualization and Intelligence—Application visualization and intelligence reporting allows administrators to see historic and real-time reports of what applications are being used by which users. Reports are completely customizable using intuitive filtering and drill-down capabilities.
Compared to the SonicOS 5.8 Visualization and Application Control features, SonicWALL GMS provides the following additional reporting features: |
|
•
|
More historic data than on firewall—Reporting on the firewall is done in-memory because most firewalls do not have a hard drive. SonicWALL GMS can store months of data versus minutes or hours of data on the firewall.
|
|
•
|
Aggregation of data across multiple devices—SonicWALL GMS allow administrators to view application usage across multiple SonicWALL firewalls – not just one firewall.
|
|
•
|
Easy access to different devices—SonicWALL GMS allow administrators to switch a report from one device to another with the click of a mouse.
|
|
•
|
Universal Dashboard—The Universal Dashboard serves as the first place an administrator visits in SonicWALL GMS to find the information he needs. The Universal Dashboard uses several subordinate tabs. SonicWALL GMS 7.0 provides several pre-configured standard tabs but the administrator also has the ability to create their own subordinate tabs (subtabs). The primary subtab is one that includes a geographic map that auto-sizes to the region in which all SonicWALL devices are deployed. The status of each device, such as. whether the device is up or down, is shown by using different icons on the map. The remainder of the page includes widgets pulling data from across the SonicWALL GMS application including logging and monitoring data. The data shown in each widget depends on the selection made in the geographic map. Using a search bar administrators can make complex appliance selections. All widgets are animated, interactive, and intuitive.
SonicWALL GMS 6.0 SP2 includes several navigation tools, to visually show what roles have been assigned to what agents (SonicWALL GMS servers), and VPN monitoring tools to show what devices are connected through VPN connections and which VPN tunnels are active. In SonicWALL GMS 7.0 these navigation tools and VPN monitoring tools are removed and replaced with similar tools available on the universal dashboard. |
|
•
|
Universal Scheduled Reports—In SonicWALL GMS 6.0 SP2 reports can be scheduled to be created and mailed to an email address but there is not one place to do this centrally. SonicWALL GMS 7.0 has one place to schedule reports to be created and mailed out across multiple appliances of various types. This approach takes much less time and is much more intuitive.
Scheduled reports can be saved as templates for future use. Several standard universal scheduled report templates are included with SonicWALL GMS. Bundled universal scheduled report templates include one to help with a compliance initiative for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and one to quickly visualize and report on application usage on the network for a new firewall deployment. |
|
•
|
NetMonitor Templates—NetMonitor is a key component of SonicWALL GMS 6.0 SP2. NetMonitor is a very powerful feature to monitor SNMP enabled devices. However, network administrators have to fully understand the SNMP protocol to configure SonicWALL GMS to monitor a device. SonicWALL GMS 7.0 adds pre-configured canned templates for SonicWALL devices to more quickly setup devices for SNMP monitoring.
|
|
•
|
Next Generation Syslog Based Reporting—SonicWALL GMS next generation reporting provides the following new enhancements:
|
|
•
|
Flexible and Granular Reporting—More optimized access to the underlying data also facilitates quick drill down capabilities and near real-time monitoring of data as it comes in.
|
|
•
|
State of the Art User Interface—SonicWALL GMS 7.0 has a Flex-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). A novel and intuitive interface layout with multiple filtering options forms the front-end of a rich and interactive web-based application for data analysis.
|
|
•
|
Reports Consolidation—Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The inclusion of a smart set of filters opens the door to a superior user experience. Administrators actually need a smaller set of reports to start from than before. Starting with one of the base reports, any custom report can be quickly generated by making the appropriate selections and saving the new custom report as a template for future use.
|
|
•
|
User Centric Reporting—SonicWALL GMS now reports on all activity of a user. SonicWALL GMS 7.0 reports on user activity as logged by a single SonicWALL device. Upcoming release versions might include user centric reporting across multiple devices of different types.
|
|
•
|
Per User Bandwidth Reporting—In SonicWALL GMS 6.0 SP2 bandwidth reporting was only given for an appliance. SonicWALL GMS 7.0 introduces more granular bandwidth reporting down to the user and application level.
|
|
•
|
More Granular Services Reporting—In SonicWALL GMS 6.0 SP2 the current services report only lists well known services such as HTTP and FTP. In SonicWALL GMS 7.0 this list of services is greatly expanded to not so well known services and custom services.
|
|
•
|
Client VPN Activity Reporting—A report detailing IPSec and SRA remote user sessions by user.
|
|
•
|
Narrative Descriptions of Reports—Detailed descriptions for each available report.
|
|
•
|
Bandwidth and Services Report per Interface—Detailed reports filtered by interfaces.
|
|
•
|
More Detailed Summary of Services over VPN Report—Detailed report of services over VPN connections.
|
|
•
|
Rogue Wireless Access Point Reporting—SonicWALL GMS 7.0 includes a new rogue wireless access point report. This is especially important to customers subject to the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) programs operated by the major payment brands.
As part of a PCI compliance initiative, if a customer is using wireless they must be able to meet the following requirement. PCI Requirement 11.1: Test for the presence of wireless access points by using a wireless analyzer at least quarterly or deploying a wireless IDS/IPS to identify all wireless devices in use. The Test Procedure to satisfy this Requirement is as follows: |
|
•
|
Localization—All end-user facing reporting screens and some of the administrator management screens of SonicWALL GMS 7.0 are localized in Japanese, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. More specifically the following screens are localized:
|
|
•
|
SonicOS Support—SonicWALL GMS 7.0 includes SonicOS support up to version 5.8.0 including IPS/ Gateway Anti-virus signature inheritance.
|
|
•
|
SRA SMB Support—SonicWALL GMS 7.0 expands support for SonicWALL SRA SMB devices with the following functionality.
|