When we tested four next-gen firewalls strictly on performance, we found that the products could forward packets at impressive rates, but throughput dropped when advanced security features were turned on. We now dive deep into application identification and control - the defining features of next-gen firewalls - to find out what works and what doesn't.

Enterprise firewalls must have policies to control traffic, ability to create site-to-site VPNs using standards-based IPsec, translate addresses and port numbers (NAT) when needed, and apply basic bandwidth management to traffic. They must also support features such as high availability (active/passive or active/active), virtual LANs, Ethernet link aggregation, and global management systems.

Check Point Software Technologies Tuesday announced a cloud-based threat-detection service that can help to identify botnets in real time and block them from wreaking havoc on enterprise networks.

It's got to be a little embarrassing for a security company steeped in paying attention to details like opening and closing firewall ports and monitoring whether applications are behaving oddly to overlook an arguably major item like maintaining the company's domain name, but it happened to Check Point Software.

Check Point and Amazon Web Services are teaming up to enable Check Point Security Gateway functionality to boost cloud security for business assets.

Check Point Software is buying governance, risk management and compliance vendor Dynasec Ltd., which will add software that can help businesses comply with government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA).

Check Point Software is coming out with technology designed specifically to fight bots by discovering infections, finding command and control servers and cutting off communications with them.

Distributor, Westcon Group, has experienced a record quarter in the Australian market, up 27.8 per cent on the same time last year.

Cloud security threats come in all shapes and sizes, so we asked eight experts to weigh in on what they see as the top threat to Cloud security. The answers run the gamut, but in all cases, our Cloud security panelists believe that these threats can be addressed.