Firewall "Module" Software for Firewall Services Module (FWSM)

Catalyst 6500 Series Switch and Cisco 7600 Series Router offer high-end modules for Firewalling, IPsec VPN, WebVPN, and IPS functionality. The market-leading Firewall Services Module (commonly referred to as FWSM) is a high-performance integrated hardware and software package that delivers full firewall protection. The FWSM has its own operating system, stemming from the PIX firewall operating system that provides flow-based, stateful, and application-aware packet inspection. The FWSM software is a hardened, embedded system that eliminates security holes and performance-degrading overheads. At the heart of the system, a protection scheme based on the Adaptive Security Algorithm offers stateful connection-oriented firewalling. The main advantage of the FWSM is a modular firewall approach that leverages existing switching and routing infrastructures into a single, scalable, centrally managed solution, thereby reducing operation and deployment costs while maintaining the highest performance standards available in the industry.