1. What position in the market does Cubix's Multiple Security Appliances fill?

The MSA is targeted at the Service Provider and Enterprise market. Service Providers will like the ability create many independent VPN/Firewalls, each with its own security policy in a single, high-density rack mounted, fault tolerant enclosure.

Cubix believes it can fill a segment in the market that wants a quality platform to deploy security services, but does not want the cost that functions such as routing and cPCI hardware adds. Cubix offers a hardware platform that provides greater scalability, space savings and throughput at much lower prices than products from Nokia, Compaq and others.

2. What appliance products were developed to meet those opportunities?

The MSA 300 supports up to 3 VPN-1/FW-1 security blades or combinations of different security blades such as anti-virus and intrusion detection. The MSA 800 supports up to 8 security blades.

3. What is the average price per blade?

A fully loaded MSA 300 (3 appliance blades) has a list price of $7,385. A similar configuration of 3 appliances using Nokia's IP330 appliances has a list price of $14,850 and 3 Compaq DL320 appliances list for $9,747. The average list price per MSA 300 and 800 blade is approximately $2400.

4. Do the MSA products use a “Hardened OS”?

Yes, MSA products satisfy the latest "Secured by Check Point" requirements for a secure Linux operating system. Hardening the OS required removing the possible holes and tools used to access and administer the Linux OS. Cubix created a user interface that is simple to use but provides secure access, set-up and administration for the OS on the appliance blade.

5. What kind of configurations can be built with MSA appliance blades?

With the help of Check Point Authorized Resellers, clusters and load-balanced systems, virus scanning and intrusion detection and multiple security policy hosts can be installed on additional blades in the same chassis. Expect to see more OPSEC partners offering their applications as appliances on Cubix Security Series blades in the near future.

6. Do Cubix appliance blades support VPN Accelerator Card II?

Yes, each appliance blade has an available PCI expansion slot that supports the VPN-1 Accelerator Card II.

7. What are the advantages of using an appliance blade architecture?

The MSA is modular in design, making it easy to service. Blades can be repurposed so there is added flexibility (they are reconfigurable unlike most appliances), they share resources for cost savings (KVM, N+1 power), and each appliance blade is “hot-swappable”. In addition, appliance blades used in the MSA 300 can be moved to the MSA 800 when expanding the “Security Farm”.

8. What is the performance of each appliance blade?

VPN-1 performance is approximately 80 Mbps with the VPN-1 Accelerator Card II. Estimated FireWall-1 throughput is 395 Mbps for each appliance blade.

9. What if more than one PCI expansion slot is needed?

Cubix offers customized configurations that provide as many as 4 PCI slots per appliance. Contact a Cubix representative for more information about specific configurations.

10. Will Cubix be selling through resellers and what advantages are there?

Cubix will be working through the Check Point Authorized Resellers to provide platform products that they can custom configure to meet their customers security needs in a single package.

11. Where does one go for more information?

For more information contact a Cubix representative at (800) 829-0550, (775) 888-1000 or visit us at www.cubix.com.

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