It is no longer sufficient to rely on outdated firewall technology that only looks at the port, protocol, source IP and destination IP to determine if a session from the outside should be allowed inside the network. Modern attackers have sophisticated tools at their disposal that allow them to insert viruses, Trojans and other harmful applications into seemingly benign traffic, such as web or email, rendering traditional stateful packet inspection firewall technology obsolete. Today's firewalls need to have deep packet inspection to look for malware hidden within the data portion of the packet, as well as a comprehensive threat signature database to find malware, intrusions and application vulnerabilities.

SonicWall leverages a continuously expanding threat signature database, created and maintained by the SonicWall SonicAlert team, which currently recognizes over 2,800 applications and detects millions of pieces of malware to protect the network automatically and seamlessly. SonicWall firewalls are unique in their ability to handle unlimited file sizes and hundreds of thousands of concurrent downloads with near zero latency, providing ultimate scalability and performance for growing networks.

SonicWall Gateway Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Intrusion Prevention and Application Intelligence and Control Service is available as a standalone one, two or three-year subscription service on all SonicWALL TZ, Network Security Appliance (NSA) and E-Class NSA Series appliances or it is included with either TotalSecure or Comprehensive Gateway Security Suite subscriptions.