Stonesoft Blends Network Security and Availability, Easing Mid-Market Transition to IP Environment

New StoneGate Platform Helps Mid-Market Enterprises Compete

ATLANTA, GA and HELSINKI, FINLAND — 05/03/2004 — Stonesoft Corporation today announced the availability of the StoneGate Platform for Security and Continuity. The new platform seamlessly unifies the StoneGate Firewall, StoneGate VPN and the new StoneGate IPS with essential network availability components.

"Unlike security platforms that merge network security and content security, StoneGate takes advantage of natural synergies of network security and network availability to ensure a safe and reliable IP environment," said Jorma Turunen, CEO of Stonesoft Corp. "As a result, mid-market enterprises can confidently deploy IP technologies such as VoIP and IP video to help streamline costs, encourage collaboration and be more competitive with large enterprises."

A March 2004 Gartner report stated: "In a recent Gartner survey, a group of North American midsize businesses identified Web enablement as a top IT priority for 2004. Employing Web-enabling applications and, in many cases, linking them together are ways many SMB CIOs believe they can cost-effectively expose, enhance, leverage and extend business processes and information to customers, vendors, partners and employees."

Turunen added, "Large enterprises can afford to have distinct personnel for network administration and network security. However, mid-market IT managers find themselves multi-tasking with responsibility for both network security and availability functions. This is a 'sweet spot' for StoneGate."

Intrinsic to its technology DNA, the StoneGate Firewall includes built-in firewall clustering and load-balancing functions, based on its award-winning StoneBeat technology that first made high availability firewalls possible. Both the StoneGate Firewall and VPN also incorporate unique ISP (Internet Service Provider) multi-homing for fault-tolerant Internet connections that secure continuous communications.

More than just the sum of its parts, the StoneGate platform utilizes the freshly upgraded StoneGate Management Center 3.0 at its core that allows the StoneGate Firewall, VPN and IPS to be managed through a single console, with shared data and unified management concepts to provide optimum security, uptime and administrative efficiency. Its built-from-the-ground-up integration ensures event correlation and incident management across essential security components with the ability to support sophisticated alert policies that automate alert handling, escalation and notification.

The new StoneGate IPS, Intrusion Detection and Analysis for Active Response, enables more accurate event detection to reduce the administrative burden and lower the costs of security incidents.

The StoneGate platform and suite of products will be available in May 2004. StoneGate products are flexibly available in appliance-based versions and as software for use with off-the-shelf Intel® hardware.

Stonesoft products can be purchased through authorized distributors and channel partners nationwide. For more information, contact sales@stonesoft.com.

About Stonesoft

Stonesoft Corporation (HEX: SFT1V) is a worldwide company focused on enterprise-level network protection and business continuity assurance. Its StoneGate™ security platform unifies firewall, VPN and IPS to deliver defense agility combined with high availability for business-critical applications. StoneGate incorporates the award-winning load-balancing technology of StoneBeat®.

Enterprises that require advanced network security and always-on business connectivity can choose StoneGate for the lowest up-front costs, best price-to-performance ratio, and highest ROI of any high-end firewall, VPN and IPS solution.

Founded in 1990, Stonesoft Corporation has international headquarters in Helsinki, Finland; Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia; and Asia Pacific regional headquarters in Singapore. For more information, go to www.stonesoft.com.