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Product Overview
The Cisco® Content Security Management Appliance (SMA) centralizes management and reporting functions across multiple Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESAs) and Web Security Appliances (WSAs). This integration simplifies the administration and planning of email and web security, improves compliance monitoring, enables a consistent enforcement of acceptable use policies, and enhances threat protection.
Features and Benefits
Organizations must often coordinate the management and administration of multiple appliances across geographically dispersed teams and must do so with limited staff and budget. The Cisco SMA addresses these challenges with industry-leading protection and control. Built on a robust platform optimized for reporting and tracking, the Cisco SMA delivers high performance and scalability for lasting investment value.
Specific features and benefits of the Cisco SMA are discussed in the following sections and described in more detail in Table 1.
Simplified Administration and Planning
Using the Cisco SMA's easy-to-use intuitive interface, network managers can publish policy settings and configuration changes from a single console to multiple Cisco ESAs and WSAs. Alternatively, organizations can dedicate specific appliances to individual applications for high-volume deployments.
In addition, network managers can be notified when security appliances exceed their recommended capacity. The Cisco SMA reports the number of transactions per second and the system's latency, response time, and proxy buffer memory. This information enables network managers to determine when they need to reconfigure the system or install additional appliances.
Improved Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement
Centralized reporting and tracking helps to determine which users are in violation of acceptable use policies, identify policy infractions across any department or site, and monitor the use of Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook and YouTube as well as visits to URLs in specific categories such as "gambling" or "sports."
By centralizing the management of multiple appliances, administrators can enforce consistent acceptable use policies across the organization.
Enhanced Threat Protection
The Cisco SMA delivers a comprehensive view of an organization's security operations, providing better threat intelligence, defense, and remediation. Important features include the centralized management of email spam quarantine, comprehensive threat monitoring across multiple web security gateways, web reputation scoring, and botnet detection. The Cisco SMA's reporting capabilities can also be used to help administrators identify and address activities involving data loss prevention (DLP).
High Performance and Scalability
The Cisco SMA has two proprietary databases optimized for reporting and tracking, rather than a single generic database. Appropriate computations are applied to each query for the rapid generation of real-time reports.
Built on the high-performance Cisco AsyncOS operating system, the Cisco SMA provides industry-leading scalability to meet the demands of small, medium-sized, and large enterprises as well as service providers.
Table 1. Features and Benefits of the Cisco SMA
Product Specifications
Cisco SMAs are built to meet the requirements of organizations of different sizes and to complement all Cisco ESAs and Cisco WSAs. Table 2 presents the performance specifications, Table 3 presents the hardware specifications, and Table 4 presents the ordering information for the Cisco SMA.
Table 2. Cisco SMA Performance Specifications
* Please confirm sizing guidance with a Cisco content security specialist to help ensure that your solution will meet your current and projected needs.
Table 3. Cisco SMA Hardware Specifications
Table 4. Ordering Information for the Cisco SMA
Why Cisco?
Security is more critical to your network than ever before. As threats and risks persist, along with concerns about confidentiality and control, security is necessary for providing business continuity, protecting valuable information, and maintaining brand reputation. Cisco security solutions embedded into the fabric of your network enable you to connect to the right information with a high degree of security without disrupting your business. No organization understands network security like Cisco. Our market leadership, industry-leading threat protection and prevention, innovative products, and longevity make us the right vendor to serve your security needs.
For More Information
For more information about the Cisco Content Security Management Appliances, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/sma or contact your local account representative.
The best way to understand the benefits of the Cisco Content Security Management Appliances is to participate in the Try Before You Buy program. To receive a fully functional evaluation appliance to test in your network, free for 30 days, visit http://www.cisco.com/go/sma.