Press Releases

BreakingPoint Adds Windows Live Messenger Protocol to Expanding List of Real Application Traffic Critical for Authentic Network Equipment Testing

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-08-20T08:00:00Z

Austin, TX – August 20, 2008 –BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., today announced expanded support of leading instant messaging (IM) applications including Windows Live Messenger, formerly MSN Messenger. Market research firm Radicati Group estimates the worldwide number of IM accounts at 1.06 billion in 2007 and growing to close to 1.7 billion by 2011. IM continues to be a critical service for recreational and business communication, bringing the consequential strain on network performance and network security. Network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers can accelerate the development of network devices by testing with a mix of real application traffic, including IM protocols, live security strikes, and speeds up to 10 gigabits per second.

Dennis Cox, BreakingPoint CTO, commented:
“Windows Live Messenger accounts for roughly 60% of all instant messaging traffic; if you aren’t testing your network devices with this application protocol you’re not truly testing. The same thing applies to other IM protocols and other application traffic such as email and peer-to-peer. A network equipment testing platform must allow you to test devices with actual traffic, live strikes and at 10 gigabits per second speeds. If your testing platform can’t provide those capabilities you are blind to the actual performance and security capabilities of your network devices."

BreakingPoint’s testing platform creates a realistic network environment by combining an authentic blend of traditional, voice, video, text and proprietary application traffic with live security strikes, at speeds of 10 gigabits per second. The inclusion of a library of more than 55 application protocols, including Windows Live Messenger, places BreakingPoint products in a unique position to reduce the time and costs associated with testing and tuning the performance and security of the world’s network devices.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing tools, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Publishes Deep Packet Inspection Testing Methodology

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-08-19T08:00:00Z

Austin, TX – August 19, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., today released a detailed test methodology and video series that enables network engineers to test the deep packet inspection (DPI) features of content-aware network devices.

BreakingPoint’s testing methodologies, videos and documentation.

DPI functionality allows network devices such as content-aware switches and routers, next generation firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), and application delivery controllers to inspect and take action based on the contents and context of packets as they travel across the network. DPI is heavily leveraged in helping to prevent buffer overflow attacks, denial of service (DoS) attacks and intrusions. Effective testing of DPI functionality requires an authentic blend of application traffic, combined with live security strikes, at speeds of 10 gigabits per second.

Dennis Cox, BreakingPoint CTO, commented:
“Deep packet inspection receives a lot of attention, primarily due to the controversy over privacy concerns and P2P bandwidth shaping. Often, these debates overshadow the important role of DPI in providing value for increased security, tiered services and data loss prevention. Testing DPI functionality is critical for network equipment manufacturers producing these devices and service providers offering these services. The BreakingPoint DPI Test Methodology and video guide was our chance to demonstrate the steps for testing DPI functionality.”

BreakingPoint Test Methodologies were developed by the team at BreakingPoint Labs based on their experience developing and testing a variety of high-performance content-aware network equipment. BreakingPoint’s testing platform enables network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to realize a 50% reduction in time-to-test and ultimately accelerate the development of next generation network devices.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

Sarrel Group Standardizes Layer 4-7 Testing with BreakingPoint Systems

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-08-13T08:00:00Z

Austin, TX – August 13, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, the content-aware network and application testing company, today announced that Sarrel Group, an independent test lab for network devices and other IT solutions, will standardize its Layer 4-7 testing using BreakingPoint’s solutions. Sarrel Group’s state-of-the-art testing lab is tasked daily by technology vendors to validate the performance and security of network devices such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Firewalls, Unified Threat Management (UTM) devices, WAN Acceleration devices and more.

Quotes
Matt Sarrel, Founder and Executive Director, Sarrel Group
“During my decades in the technology industry I have used dozens of different network and security testing solutions, often at the same time in order to accomplish my task. BreakingPoint offers next-generation test tools that will provide us with a competitive advantage over labs using legacy test equipment and enable us to efficiently test the industry’s latest network equipment. BreakingPoint’s abilities to test with real application traffic, live security strikes and at line speed are obvious competitive advantages. However, their commitment to removing the complexity from testing through an easy-to-use management interface, out-of-the box access to applications and constant protocol and security strike updates is what truly differentiates them in this market.”

Dennis Cox, CTO, BreakingPoint Systems
“Test labs, whether independent or within a company, are obviously a critical element in the lifecycle of a network device. But for those of us who have been in the lab, we know that we are only as good as the testing tools available. We created BreakingPoint to introduce new testing technology, but also a new mindset into how intuitive testing should be. When we first spoke with the Sarrel Group they shared many of the same frustrations we had run into as network engineers. Using BreakingPoint’s testing solutions we can not only help them test more accurately but eliminate many of the barriers to test that once existed.”

Announcement Details

Sarrel Group is migrating its layer 4 through 7 test methodologies to the BreakingPoint platform in order to take advantage of its powerful multi-protocol, high-throughput and live security attack capabilities.
Sarrel Group provides testing and testing methodologies that are real-world, reproducible, and rigorous. Sarrel Group evaluates technology products and provides manufacturers with actionable technology analysis. Their group of hands-on analysts also provides IT consulting and editorial services such as reviewers’ guides, white papers, and other custom publishing sales and marketing collateral.
BreakingPoint is setting the pace of innovation to effectively test next-generation, content-aware equipment. The ability to simulate and test the volume and complexity of today's business network goes far beyond the traditional simulation of HTTP traffic. A true test of the performance and security of a network or network device must combine authentic converged business application traffic with live security threats.
BreakingPoint is unique in its ability to test Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of network equipment at 10 Gigabits per second, which is essential for content-aware devices such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Load Balancers, Firewalls, VPN or WAN Optimization products.

About Sarrel Group
Sarrel Group is a unique, full-service publishing and technical assessment company located in New York City. We evaluate, communicate and deploy leading-edge technologies. Sarrel Group helps our clients identify and correct technology problems in their products and applications by providing a wide range of testing services. Founded in 2005 by Matt Sarrel, a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) with 20 years of experience developing, implementing, and testing technology solutions and a well-known technology writer and speaker, Sarrel Group helps companies prepare for media reviews and develop powerful technical sales and marketing materials. For more information visit www.sarrelgroup.com.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing tools, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

NetQoS Selects BreakingPoint for Realistic Layer 4-7 Testing at 10 Gigabits per Second

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-08-05T07:00:00Z

Austin, TX – August 5, 2008 – Peak network and application performance is a critical business driver that grows more challenging to monitor and maintain every day with the increasing amount of application traffic and faster network speeds. NetQoS® Inc., a leading provider of network and application performance management solutions, has chosen BreakingPoint’s testing platform to test and validate the performance of its products as part of the company’s quality assurance program. NetQoS is using BreakingPoint’s ability to generate stateful application protocols at 10 Gigabits per second for realistic Layer 4-7 testing and to speed new releases to market.

News Highlights
A few of the reasons NetQoS selected BreakingPoint:

Application Protocol Support: NetQoS products help large enterprises and service providers monitor the performance of their networks, including specific business critical application protocols such as VoIP and FIX. BreakingPoint supports a very large number of applications, more than 50 protocols, including trading protocols, voice and video, peer to peer, and other enterprise applications. BreakingPoint provides these updates continuously and transparently to users at no extra cost.
Flexibility: As NetQoS products and needs evolve, BreakingPoint products evolve in terms of realistic application traffic generation and performance. BreakingPoint’s architecture loosely couples the application protocol and security layer with test management software and high-performance hardware. Because these layers are not tied to a hardware release schedule, no forklift upgrades are required.
Ease of Use: The BreakingPoint system is ready to use within minutes of deployment, testing a variety of devices using an authentic blend of application traffic and live security strikes at speeds of 10 Gigabits per second.
Performance: BreakingPoint’s ability to test with realistic application traffic at line speed enables NetQoS to validate the performance of its network performance management solutions with confidence.

Executive Commentary
Brian Osborne, Director of QA, NetQoS
“NetQoS products are used by many of the largest IT organizations in the world to monitor their global enterprise networks, where performance and reliability are vital. It is important that we have a reliable and accurate portrayal of how our products will work in extremely busy production networks. With BreakingPoint we get hard data that shows us how well our products are working. The requirements for performance testing have shifted dramatically over the past few years and BreakingPoint recognized this shift and delivered a product that is not only powerful, but extremely easy to use.”

Des Wilson, CEO, BreakingPoint Systems
“Speed and accuracy are the cornerstones to valid testing of network equipment. Without realistic application traffic and the ability to simulate at speeds of 10 gigabits per second, you don’t have true performance numbers to share with your own customers and prospects. NetQoS monitors the performance of the largest networks in the world and we are delighted that they selected BreakingPoint to help test and validate their own solutions in real-world conditions and push the performance envelope even further.”

About NetQoS Inc.
NetQoS provides network and application performance management software and services that improve application delivery across the world’s most complex networks. More than 900 service providers, government agencies, and large enterprises – including more than half of the Fortune 100 – use the NetQoS Performance Center to monitor application service levels, troubleshoot problems quickly, and plan for change. Representative NetQoS customers include Chevron, Lockheed Martin, American Express, Hilton Hotels, Siemens, Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, NASA, and Barclays Global Investors. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NetQoS has R&D centers in Austin and Raleigh, N.C., and regional sales offices in London and Singapore. For more information, visit www.netqos.com or call (877) 835-9575.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Adds Twitter Protocol to Network Performance Testing Platform

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-07-30T12:53:41Z

AUSTIN, TX—July 30, 2008—From Twitter: @BreakingPoint Tests Network Performance Using Real Twitter Traffic. http://tinyurl.com/TestingTwitter.

For more information:
Blog
Twitter Feed
Twitter Search

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing tools, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Adds Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol to Easy-to-Use, 10+ Gigabit Network Device Testing Platform

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-07-22T08:25:00Z

Austin, TX – July 22, 2008 –BreakingPoint announced today the first line of application and performance testing products to support native generation of the Financial Information eXchange (FIX/FIXT) application protocol at unparralled speeds. FIX is the global messaging standard for the electronic communication of trade-related messages between financial entities such as banks, broker-dealers, exchanges, and industry utilities.

BreakingPoint’s testing platform creates a realistic network environment by combining a realistic blend of traditional, voice, video, financial and proprietary application traffic with live security strikes, all run at speeds 10 Gigabits per second and faster. The inclusion of the FIX protocol places BreakingPoint products in a unique position to reduce the time and costs associated with testing and tuning the performance and security of the network devices managing the world’s financial systems.

Testing network devices that support high performance financial trading systems requires several of the unique capabilities of BreakingPoint products including:

Generation of realistic application traffic from a library of 50+ application protocols, custom applications, and 3500+ security strikes at speeds of 10 Gigabits per second and faster provides an accurate testing environment that demonstrates actual network device performance and vulnerabilities.
Testing with a realistic blend of application traffic at peak load is critical for tuning the performance of trading systems and identifying and resolving costly problems before they arise in latency-sensitive environments. In April of 2008, the TABB Group, a premier financial market research firm, estimated, “Up to 10 milliseconds of latency could result in a 10% drop in revenues.”
Ability to be consistently and automatically updated with the latest in application protocols and security strikes so that every test is up-to-date with the most realistic data.
A reduction in time-to-test by 50% brought about by a user-interface designed for ease-of-use, automated testing features and a library of pre-loaded application profiles that drastically simplifies the creation and modification of complex tests.
A unified system that thoroughly tests the deep packet inspection (DPI) capabilities of content-aware equipment for easily testing trading systems under peak market conditions.

BreakingPoint CEO, Des Wilson, commented:
“The ability for a financial services company to succeed often comes down to milliseconds of network performance. These organizations want to reap the benefits of new high performance content-aware network devices to enhance their customers’ experience, while reducing the risks, necessitating the need to validate the performance and reliability of these network devices. BreakingPoint’s easy-to-use products are uniquely designed to use realistic user traffic and network conditions, especially at Layers 4-7, allowing companies to confidently deploy next-generation network devices.”

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing tools, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

Secure Crossing Accelerates Development of Network Devices Using BreakingPoint Systems’ Testing Platform

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-07-09T13:05:15Z

Austin, TX – July 9, 2008 – Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs) continue to push the limits of innovation, introducing the latest in content-aware, next-generation network appliances. Secure Crossing is an ideal example of an industry innovator, providing enterprise-level security for SMBs with its Unified Threat Management (UTM) suite of solutions. Secure Crossing’s UTM appliances are designed to protect an organization from complex Internet-based threats, so it must adhere to strict IT audit measurements. Using BreakingPoint Systems’ content-aware network and application testing tools, Secure Crossing validates the performance of their devices, reduces their time-to-test and accelerates product development.

Executive Commentary
Randy Reeves, CTO & Founder, Secure Crossing

“Secure Crossing is an OEM manufacturer that provides sophisticated, easy-to-use Zenwall UTM appliance solutions for the small/medium business and small/medium enterprise markets. Secure Crossing tests and certifies Zenwall appliances to meet the most demanding requirements in network security including critical infrastructure. Our products stop network threats before they can impact a company’s business. Together with our channel partners, we provide these services throughout the banking, medical, manufacturing, retail, services and government industries. Using BreakingPoint, we test our products the same way as the large NEMs and independent testing houses.”

Mr. Reeves continued, outlining the three competitive advantages he saw with BreakingPoint after reviewing several testing solutions:

“First, we can validate how our appliances handle actual application traffic input and because BreakingPoint is continuously and automatically updated we test with the latest application and security protocols. Second, BreakingPoint provides us with definite performance numbers that we can share directly with our customers. We use BreakingPoint to replicate actual traffic from a customer network so they can see, in real-time, how Secure Crossing’s devices will perform in their network. Finally, impeccable support from BreakingPoint Labs has been critical in helping us get the most out of the BreakingPoint solution. You put those three items together and it’s easy to see why the industry is talking about BreakingPoint.”

Des Wilson, CEO, BreakingPoint Systems
“Secure Crossing is a great example of a company continuing to innovate in order to meet the demand for smarter, faster and more secure network equipment. They know that in order to properly test the devices prior to deployment they must use real application traffic, up to date live security strikes and run it at speeds of 10 Gbps and faster. BreakingPoint enables this realistic testing environment while reducing time-to-test by more than 50% whether you are a high-growth organization like Secure Crossing or a Fortune 100 global device manufacturer.”

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Releases ActiveX Instantiation Strike

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-07-08T08:00:00Z

Austin, TX – July 8, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, today released the “Killed ActiveX Instantiation” strike. Microsoft has issued a list of more than 445 ActiveX controls that should be stopped, known as “kill bits”, essentially a vendor-provided blacklist of software component vulnerabilities. The BreakingPoint ActiveX strike allows Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers to ensure that network devices that provide coverage for client-side browser vulnerabilities are covering this often missed exposure.

Details and More Information:

BreakingPoint users log in to get the latest security strikes.
Download the “Killed ActiveX Instantiation Strike” information sheet.
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article, “How to stop an ActiveX control from running in Internet Explorer.”

BreakingPoint CTO & Founder Dennis Cox comments:
“BreakingPoint was founded to help network devices push the envelope on performance, in both speed and security. This ActiveX vulnerability is high-risk and our team has found network devices that lacked coverage for most, and in some cases all, of these killed ActiveX controls. By providing NEMs the ability to test for this malicious ActiveX instantiation they can immediately enhance the performance of their devices and help better protect client-side workstations. Unique in the testing industry, our team of researchers in BreakingPoint Labs continuously creates new ways, such as this ActiveX strike, to test and dramatically improve network equipment.”

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing tools, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Systems Continues Growth and Momentum with Appointment of Vice President of North American Sales

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-06-26T09:00:00Z

AUSTIN, TX—June 26, 2008 —BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, today announced Jim Alnwick has joined as vice president of North American sales. Alnwick joins BreakingPoint with a proven record of sales and business development success in the telecommunications industry, providing solutions to network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers. At BreakingPoint, Alnwick will leverage his past success to help the company meet the ever-growing demand for content-aware network and application testing solutions.

Quotes
Des Wilson, Chief Executive Officer
"We're seeing tremendous innovation in the network equipment industry with new, more sophisticated high performance devices emerging at a faster pace. Testing equipment of this caliber also requires innovation, not to mention realistic application traffic and live security attacks at speeds of 10 Gigabits per second and faster. This is an important time for our industry and having Jim join BreakingPoint is an exciting opportunity. His leadership will help us further grow our sales organization to meet the strong demand for our products and help our customers accelerate the development of their high performance network equipment."

About Jim Alnwick, BreakingPoint Systems’ Vice President of Sales, North America
Alnwick is a senior sales executive with more than 20 years of success in developing worldwide sales organizations in the telecommunications industry. His experience spans the spectrum from building a sales department from the ground-up and taking sales for a startup from $0 to multiple millions in just a few months, to streamlining and developing new strategies for Fortune 100 companies while booking upwards of $250 million in revenue. When implementing his overall sales strategy, Alnwick adheres to his strength in team and channel development while properly defining and executing sales strategies.

Prior to joining BreakingPoint, Alnwick served as Vice President of Monitoring Sales with Empirix and before that Worldwide Sales Manager for Agilent. Alnwick has also helped build successful sales processes and organizations with Hekimian (now Spirent), HP and Harris Corporation.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Toolkit First to Allow Native Generation of Stateful Proprietary Application Traffic

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-06-25T06:00:00Z

Austin, TX – June 25, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, today released the BreakingPoint Custom Network Application Protocol Toolkit. The toolkit allows users to natively generate stateful application traffic from proprietary apps and integrate the traffic with BreakingPoint’s testing platform to validate the effects of proprietary application traffic on high performance network devices. Network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers, for the first time, can test network equipment with proprietary application protocols, simulating traffic at speeds of 10 Gigabits per second on a single interface and scaling up to 160 Gigabits per second.

Elisabeth Rainge, Program Director, IDC
"NEMs and service providers testing next generation equipment must generate a realistic mix of business, recreational, malicious, and proprietary application traffic at ever increasing speeds. BreakingPoint support for simulation of proprietary application traffic is an important step towards addressing the growing application-oriented and content-aware network test challenges."

Dennis Cox, CTO & founder, BreakingPoint Systems
“From the start, BreakingPoint’s architecture and our ability to define custom application protocols have allowed us to build the industry’s largest portfolio of application protocols and security attacks. Using our technological advantage we have now taken it a step further and opened our extensible testing platform to enable customers to test as many applications as they need. Giving our users a toolkit to create their own network application protocols means they quickly adapt their testing to the most realistic conditions possible for early validation of performance and reliability and ultimately the ability to deliver new equipment to market faster.”

Overview of Features & Benefits

Legacy test vendors have been unable to meet the application traffic needs of NEMs and service providers due to their locked-down architecture. BreakingPoint solutions are architected in three independent layers that work together to simulate realistic applications and are updated with new application protocols on a weekly basis. Enabling the BreakingPoint Custom Network Application Protocol Toolkit takes this extensibility a step further, opening the platform to any application traffic.
BreakingPoint products generate realistic application traffic from more than 50 common application protocols such as CIFS/SMB, Postgres, DB2, and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. This traffic can be converged with traffic from more than 3,500 security strikes for the industry’s most realistic and scalable network equipment testing solution.
Using the BreakingPoint Custom Network Application Protocol Toolkit, customers integrate custom applications to run on BreakingPoint’s hardware in a matter of hours. They can then simulate converged stateful application traffic with live security strikes to determine the effects of realistic traffic on network equipment.
Custom developed application protocols can be emulated, enhanced and integrated with BreakingPoint’s library of 50+ application protocols and 3,500+ security strikes to test network devices in a truly realistic environment.
BreakingPoint’s Custom Network Application Protocol Toolkit is now available to BreakingPoint users as an upgrade to existing maintenance agreements.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing tools, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Publishes Methodology for Testing Content-Aware Network Devices

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-06-11T08:30:00Z

Austin, TX – June 11, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, today announced the first in a series of test methodologies, documenting processes for validating the performance and reliability of next generation network devices. The methodologies, the first focused on Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), establish a unique collection of tools including video discussions and documented testing techniques. BreakingPoint customers enjoy the added benefit of the test plan automatically downloaded onto their BreakingPoint testing device.

BreakingPoint will continue to add methodologies to the library, including video and documentation, for download. All materials can be found here .

Dennis Cox, CTO & founder, BreakingPoint Systems
“A new generation of content-aware network equipment has forced testing to move up the stack to more realistic Layer 4-7 testing. You simply can’t rely on the same tools and methodologies once used to test routers and switches. That’s why we are building this library of test methodologies and videos. They provide a roadmap for testing a broad range of content-aware equipment and open up a dialogue within the community to help us evolve the art and science of high performance DPI testing.”

BreakingPoint's Dennis Cox and Rik Maerz introduce the IPS Test Methodology:

The BreakingPoint test methodologies were developed by the team at BreakingPoint Labs based on their experience developing a variety of high-performance network equipment, including IPS. BreakingPoint’s testing platform enables network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) to realize a 50% reduction in time-to-test and ultimately accelerate the development of network devices.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Accelerates Development of Next-Generation Network Devices and Reduces Time-to-Test by 50 Percent

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-06-02T15:25:00Z

Austin, TX – June 2, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, today announced support for 50 application protocols, IPv6 and SSL transport protocols, as well as new security testing, test automation, and real-time reporting capabilities in Version 1.2 of the BreakingPoint testing software. The new features enable network equipment manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers to accelerate the development of content-aware network devices and services with comprehensive Deep Packet Inspection

(DPI) testing functionality. BreakingPoint’s solutions validate performance and reliability under the most realistic and current conditions, while reducing time-to-test by more than 50 percent.

The BreakingPoint Architecture Advantage

BreakingPoint’s unique architecture loosely couples the application protocol and security layer with test management software and high-performance hardware. This allows BreakingPoint to continuously release new applications, security updates, and testing functionality to adapt rapidly to today’s dynamic environments.
Customers leverage BreakingPoint’s high-performance, adaptive architecture, along with the experts at BreakingPoint Labs to quickly, easily, and cost-effectively test next-generation equipment using their own proprietary applications.
BreakingPoint is ready to test within 5 minutes of deployment; testing WAN optimization devices, Firewalls, IPS, UTM, Proxy, Anti-Virus, switches L2/L3, and load balancers using an authentic blend of application traffic and live security strikes at speeds of 10 to 100 Gigabits per second.

Visit here for a demo of BreakingPoint’s solutions.

Quotes Des Wilson, CEO, BreakingPoint Systems

“The introduction of content-aware network equipment has rendered legacy testing tools obsolete. Architecturally, these tools are not capable of producing the high session count, realistic blends of application traffic, and security attacks required to assess DPI functionality and accelerate the development, certification, and deployment of this type of sophisticated network equipment. Our groundbreaking testing platform solved this problem while setting a new standard for high performance and ease of use. With this new release, we take content-aware testing to a new level with the industry’s most comprehensive application performance and security testing capabilities.”

Details of BreakingPoint Version 1.2

The most current and comprehensive Layer 2-7 testing—Native generation of application traffic and live security attacks from more than 50 application protocols, and 3,500 security strikes. The complete list of supported application protocols includes DB2, FIXT, MS SQL Server, Microsoft Common Internet File System (CIFS/SMB), Oracle, Radius Access, and Radius Accounting.
IPv6 and SSL support—Support for IPv6 for Routing Robot and SSL support for Session Sender with the ability to generate 40 Gigabits of IPv6 traffic from a single device.
Target devices with attacks–Target live host servers or run virtual security attacks and watch the results of tests as they run.
Enhanced zero-day exploit coverage—Greater coverage for Zero-day exploits with full evasion capabilities that can be applied to exploits directly during traffic generation. More than 80 different techniques are built into the BreakingPoint test software, including stream segmentation, packet fragmentation, URL obfuscation, FTP telnet opcode and space insertion, RPC fragmentation, and protocol fuzzing.
Easily aggregate systems to generate 100+ Gigabits per second of stateful application traffic–Scale to unprecedented performance levels with the ability to combine and control multiple boxes and ports through a single management interface.
Automatically produce executive-level to granular reports and view real-time statistics –Generate graphical display options and instant reports, freeze and view real-time statistics of tests in progress, and export reports in PDF, RTF, XLS, CSV, or HTML formats.

Availability

BreakingPoint version 1.2 is available today as a complimentary software upgrade for customers with a current maintenance agreement. Customers also have access to the growing portfolio of business, recreational, and malicious application protocols.

About BreakingPoint

BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy-to-use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

Info Security Products Guide Honors BreakingPoint and HD Moore with the Shaping Info Security 2008 Industry Award

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-05-27T21:37:26Z

Austin, TX – May 27, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, announced today that Info Security Products Guide, a Silicon Valley Communications publication and the world’s leading publication on security-related products and technologies has honored BreakingPoint and HD Moore, Director of BreakingPoint Labs, with the “Shaping Info Security 2008 Industry Award”. This prestigious industry award recognizes individuals and teams from around the world that have made the most positive impact on network security in today’s highly sophisticated and blended attacks environment.

“Behind every successful vendor that is consistently making progress in all areas of enhancing and implementing security worldwide, there is one thing in common. And that is they all have great people working for them,” said Rake Narang, editor-in-chief, Info Security Products Guide. “We are proud to honor BreakingPoint and HD Moore with this year’s Shaping Info Security 2008 award and acknowledge their positive contribution to the industry and the users of security products and services all over the world.”

About BreakingPoint Products

BreakingPoint application, performance, and security testing products deliver authentic converged business and recreational application traffic combined with live security attacks, all at speeds of 10 Gigabits per second and faster. With more than 4 times the application protocols, 700 times the TCP sessions, and 100 times the performance across protocols, only BreakingPoint provides the components required for today’s dynamic content-aware test environments in a single device. As new application protocols and security threats emerge, BreakingPoint delivers express applications to help network equipment manufacturers accelerate development. More information about BreakingPoint products is available here.

About Info Security Products Guide Awards

Info Security Products Guide plays a vital role in keeping end-users informed of the choices they can make when it comes to protecting their digital resources. It is written expressly for those who are adamant on staying informed of security threats and the preventive measure they can take. You will discover a wealth of information in this guide including tomorrow’s technology today, best deployment scenarios, people and technologies shaping info security and independent product evaluations that facilitate in making the most pertinent security decisions. The Info Security Products Guide Awards recognize and honor excellence in all areas of information security. To learn more, visit www.infosecurityproductsguide.com and stay secured.

About BreakingPoint

BreakingPoint is the only company focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. By delivering the industry’s most accurate, fast, responsive and easy to use testing solutions, BreakingPoint helps network equipment manufacturers, services providers, and other organizations accelerate the development of high performance content-aware networks and network devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

BreakingPoint Receives Network Products Guide 2008 Product Innovation Award

Kyle Flaherty — 2008-05-14T11:30:00Z

Austin, TX – May 14, 2008 – BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, announced today that Network Products Guide, a Silicon Valley Communications publication and a world leading publication on technologies and solutions, has named the BreakingPoint BPS10K a winner of the 2008 Product Innovation Award. This annually venerated award recognizes and honors vendors from all over the world with innovative and groundbreaking products that are bringing essential and incremental changes and are setting the bar higher for others in all areas of information technology.

The BreakingPoint BPS10K tests next-generation networks and network equipment by emulating the most realistic converged business, recreational, and malicious applications at unprecedented performance levels. BreakingPoint offers Network Equipment Manufacturers (NEMs) and service providers the testing firepower, 40 Gigabit per second of stateless traffic and 10 Gigabit per second of application traffic, to put a new generation of content-aware products and services to the test. BreakingPoint products help companies accelerate development, improve product quality and reduce R&D costs by delivering complete network test capabilities for layers 2-7 with 50+ application protocols, a security test suite, and a service that provides timely updates on applications, threats, exploits, and evasion techniques. To read more about this product innovation, please visit Network Products Guide.

“The goal of any product innovation must always remain a positive change; making or improving solutions better than before,” says Rake Narang, editor-in-chief, Network Products Guide. “Innovative products such as the BreakingPoint BPS 10K are bringing improvements in the ability to properly test content-aware networks with authentic converged application traffic at speeds of 10 gigabits per second or faster.”

“BreakingPoint is focused on providing the most accurate, fastest, and most responsive testing platform available, enabling network equipment manufacturers and services providers to deliver reliable, high performance content-aware network products and services,” said Des Wilson, BreakingPoint CEO. “This award from Network Products Guide is further recognition of our track record of innovation and our ability to provide next-generation testing solutions for next-generation network equipment.”

About Network Products Guide Awards
Network Products Guide published from Silicon Valley is a leading provider of products, technologies and vendor related research and analysis. You will discover a wealth of information in this guide including product innovations, roadmaps, industry directions, technology advancements and independent product evaluations that facilitate in making the most pertinent technology decisions impacting business and personal goals. The guide follows conscientious research methodologies developed and enhanced by industry experts. To learn more, visit www.networkproductsguide.com.

About BreakingPoint
BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.

NSS Labs Selects BreakingPoint As Standard For Testing Next Generation Content-Aware Network Equipment

2008-05-09T04:00:00Z

Austin, TX - May 9, 2008 - BreakingPoint Systems, Inc., the content-aware network and application testing company, today announced that NSS Labs has selected BreakingPoint as its standard for testing content-aware network equipment in its laboratory. Today's announcement comes after more than a year of the two companies working closely together.

Announcement Details

NSS Labs is migrating its layer 4 through 7 test methodologies to the BreakingPoint platform in order to take advantage of its powerful multi-protocol, high-throughput and live security attack capabilities.
BreakingPoint is setting the pace of innovation to effectively test next-generation, content-aware equipment. The ability to simulate and test the volume and complexity of today's business network goes far beyond the traditional simulation of HTTP traffic. A true test of the performance and security of a network or network device must combine authentic converged business application traffic with live security threats.
BreakingPoint is unique in its ability to test Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) of network equipment at 10 Gigabits per second and faster, which is essential for content-aware devices such as Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), load balancers, firewalls, VPN or WAN Optimization products.
NSS Labs operates a transparent, scientifically repeatable certification process, ensuring the highest levels of independence, diligence and integrity. The company performs real-world product testing, employing full application layer traffic, real verifiable exploits and live hosts.
NSS Labs' use of BreakingPoint's solutions offers the ability to test and certify network devices with natively generated application traffic, selecting from more than 37 application protocols including FIX, Microsoft CIFS SMB, MS SQL, Oracle, peer to peer, SSL and more.

Executive Quotes

Bob Walder, Founder and CTO, NSS Labs

“The sophistication of today's networks demands that we test equipment under a variety of real-world traffic conditions. Proper testing of a wide range of use cases requires the ability to generate blended application traffic with high session counts while maintaining multi-Gigabit throughput. BreakingPoint's extensible framework enables NSS Labs to efficiently create repeatable and scalable tests containing extremely complex applications.”

Des Wilson, CEO, BreakingPoint Systems

“NSS Labs is globally recognized for its commitment to the most rigorous real-world testing of the performance and security of network devices. The ability to work with this industry leader is an exciting opportunity for BreakingPoint and a validation of our mission. Legacy test products have not kept up with the pace of innovation and are not architected to properly test next-generation content-aware equipment. Evaluating and certifying content-aware equipment by testing with a single application, like HTTP, may seem suitable for other testing providers, but it is irresponsible when today's network devices are hammered by an increasing volume of business, recreational and malicious traffic.”

About BreakingPoint

BreakingPoint is the only company exclusively focused on application, performance, and security testing for content-aware devices. BreakingPoint was founded in 2005 by engineers with deep experience developing high speed networking devices at companies such as NetWorth, NetSpeed, Cisco, TippingPoint, and 3Com. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas with offices and customers in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and China. For more information, visit www.breakingpointsystems.com.