A security appliance is any form of

server appliance A computer appliance is a home appliance with software or firmware that is specifically designed to provide a specific computing resource. Such devices became known as ''appliances'' because of the similarity in role or management to a home ...

that is designed to protect

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

s from unwanted traffic.

Types of Security Appliances

* Active devices block unwanted traffic. Examples of such devices are firewalls, anti virus scanning devices, and

content filtering An Internet filter is software that restricts or controls the content an Internet user is capable to access, especially when utilized to restrict material delivered over the Internet via the Web, Email, or other means. Content-control software dete ...

devices. * Passive devices detect and report on unwanted traffic, such as

intrusion detection An intrusion detection system (IDS; also intrusion prevention system or IPS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically rep ...

appliances. * Preventative devices scan networks and identify potential security problems (such as

penetration testing A penetration test, colloquially known as a pen test or ethical hacking, is an authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system, performed to evaluate the security of the system; this is not to be confused with a vulnerability assessment ...

and

vulnerability assessment A vulnerability assessment is the process of identifying, quantifying, and prioritizing (or ranking) the vulnerabilities in a system. Examples of systems for which vulnerability assessments are performed include, but are not limited to, informatio ...

appliances). * Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances combine features together into one system, such as some firewalls, content filtering,

web caching A Web cache (or HTTP cache) is a system for optimizing the World Wide Web. It is implemented both client-side and server-side. The caching of multimedias and other files can result in less overall delay when browsing the Web. Parts of the syste ...

etc.

References

Server appliance {{compu-network-stub