Overview
It can be a real challenge for IT administrators to maximize the business value of Web applications while minimizing the risk. While certain critical applications need bandwidth prioritization, other non-productive apps may need to be bandwidth throttled or completely blocked. SonicWALL Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation makes the job easy, with granular control and real-time visualisation of applications to guarantee bandwidth prioritization and ensure maximum network security and productivity.
Application Intelligence Flow Diagram
Application Intelligence
Scanning every byte of every packet of all network traffic, SonicWALL provides complete application intelligence, control and visualisation—regardless of port or protocol—by determining exactly what applications are being used and who is using them.
Application Control
With new levels of management and ease of use, Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation gives IT administrators granular control of applications and users. Administrators can easily create bandwidth management policies based on logical pre-defined categories (such as social media or gaming), individual applications, or even users and groups.
Application Visualisation
To control network use properly, administrators must visualise application traffic and adjust network policy based on critical observations. The SonicWALL Application Flow Monitor provides real-time graphs of applications, ingress and egress bandwidth, Web sites visited and all user activity.
As a tightly integrated feature of SonicWALL Next-Generation Firewalls, SonicWALL Application Intelligence and Control puts the power back into the hands of IT administrators, easily sorting out the good applications from the bad and helping to enhance productivity without compromising security.
Best Practices 5 Tough Questions
Tough Question #1: My marketing department needs access to Facebook to build awareness—but I want to block the games... what can I do?
Simple Answer: Use Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation
Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation enables you to guarantee bandwidth and allow access for some applications while restricting or blocking either specific applications, categories of applications or to block application sub-components such as the Farmville game or file transfer from within Instant Messaging applications. You can even create rules in order to block specific lists from accessing these applications. This is all tracked by logging in to the Application Flow Monitor to see, through real-time visualisation, the effectiveness of your new application control policy.
Tough Question #2: How do I ensure that my sales team has prioritized bandwidth to productive Web-based applications like Salesforce.com® over unproductive Web-based applications such as ESPN® Live View?
Answer: Use Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation
Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation easily enables you to ensure bandwidth for key business applications while restricting or blocking application categories such as gaming or streaming video. With this solution, you can select critical applications or groups of applications, specify the bandwidth you would like to guarantee to your specified user groups and create an application control policy to prioritize bandwidth for the selected critical applications and users. Finally, you can check the Application Flow Monitor to see in real-time the results of your new application policies.
Tough Question #3: My sales team users really need to access corporate Web seminars and videoconferences—but I do not want them hogging bandwidth on YouTube®. What can I do?
Answer: Use Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation
Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation enables you to ensure bandwidth for key Web-based collaboration tools, while restricting or blocking non-productive Web applications such as YouTube. Simply select the critical Web-based applications or urls and choose how much bandwidth you want to guarantee to this group. You can also restrict bandwidth or block non-productive Web-based applications or urls and select the users or group that will be included in this policy. By logging in to Application Flow Monitor, you can visualise the results of your new policy.
Tough Question #4: I need to be able to scan all traffic simultaneously to defend against malware, as well as visualise and control any type of application on the network. What can I do?
Answer: Use SonicWALL Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection™ threat protection with Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation
Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation with enhanced visualisation and Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection enables you to scan and protect 100% of all application traffic entering your network while simultaneously performing traffic shaping without introducing latency. With the Application Flow Monitor, you get a real-time view of application and user traffic, bandwidth utilization and other user activity. It's easy to export data continuously to any NetFlow/IPFIX analyzer for off-box monitoring, troubleshooting and analysis of historical network activity. Meanwhile, you can continue to adjust your network policies based on critical observations, plus monitor threats that are stopped at the gateway before entering your network.
Tough Question #5: I need to protect confidential content from being leaked over outbound Web mail transmissions or social media sites. What can I do?
Answer: Use Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation
Application Intelligence, Control and Visualisation with enhanced visualisation and Reassembly-Free Deep Packet Inspection enables you to scan 100% of all application traffic leaving your network, including email attachments and FTP uploads. You can simply create a filter for the type of content that identifies confidential data, and then apply the filter to outbound mail, FTP and other traffic, and set the firewall to block the transfer. By monitoring the logs, you can easily detect the transfer of confidential data. You can also observe traffic patterns with the Application Flow Monitor and adjust network policy accordingly.
Documentation
Data Sheets
- SonicWALL Application Intelligence Service
Find out how you can put Application Intelligence to work in your business to maintain greater control over applications, documents and data.
White Papers
- SearchSecurity.com: Application Intelligence - Expert Guide to Web Application Security Must-Haves
In this expert E-Guide, find answers to four key Web application security questions. Also discover best practices for application-level firewall selection and deployment.
- Business Insight: Enabling Server Virtualization with Enterprise Security Solutions
Learn how SonicWALL E-Class NSA appliances can help your company fully realize the benefits of server virtualization and resulting dynamic datacenters by providing IT departments with a highly effective and affordable solution to a handful of related security challenges.
Case Studies
- Berry College Case Study
“SonicWALL has consistently offered a better value for the money than similar solutions we’ve looked at.”
- Bolton College Case Study
“Due to the friendliness of the user interface, and compared to doing the same job with the PIX, our users will feel immediate benefit with this technology.”
- BGMX Retail Solutions
“My customers absolutely love it. Now I’ve got a good handle on bandwidth going in and out, who is using it, and what should be throttled..."
- Premier Education Group
“Now, I can apply a change to all appliances in one single step in just minutes.”
Screenshots
Web Management Interface - Application Flow Monitor 
Web Management Interface - Application Flow Monitor 
Web Management Interface - Real-Time Monitor 
