BreakingPoint Storm CTM Firmware Release 2.1
by Dennis CoxWell, it may not seem like a long time has passed since our massive 2.0 release, but another release is due to leave our quality assurance group in the next few weeks. This will be release 2.1, and it contains a new lab called "Lawful Intercept," improved reporting, super fast stack fuzzing, and lastly our first step in moving from Flash® to Flex®. As always, this release is free to customers with current maintenance, no licensing or tomfoolery involved.
Moving From Flash to Flex
Let's start with the User Interface moving from Flash to the Flex framework. We started the company in 2005 and since then Adobe has been moving Flash up and to the right quite a bit. Huge improvements have been made in Flash and the Action Script language. When we started our User Interface in 2005, Flash was something not too many enterprises used for applications. Now, complete financial trading systems use Flash for their Enterprise Applications. The Flex framework is the latest addition to the Flash Platform and will speed up development for us by quite a bit.
Rewriting the entire UI in Flex is not a small feat and not something we wanted to do in one release. So instead we will be converting pieces of the UI step by step into Flex. How will this affect you? It really won't. We hid everything from you, other than the awesome-looking new screens. You connect the box the same way, that's the beauty of Flash — no BreakingPoint client software to install. We just work!
However, we didn't want to just make the screens in the Flex framework with the same look and feel, we wanted to completely rewrite the work flow with everything we learned. So the first thing you will see is that the home screen has changed and the new lab, Lawful Intercept, takes on a different style than previous labs. Every release will have a new section revamped and, as always, we love feedback. I've included some screenshots below so you can see what we are talking about.
Lawful Intercept Validation Lab
On the topic of User Interface, we added a new lab entitled Lawful Intercept. Like our Resiliency Scoring Lab, Lawful Intercept has its own reporting section and real time statistics screen. The lab was designed for customers that perform Needle-in-the-Haystack tests. It supports everything from Data Loss Prevention devices looking for social security numbers and credit cards to Lawful Intercept devices looking for keywords used in terrorist threats. Lawful Intercept is a single screen to let you configure and validate those types of scenarios. There is quite a bit to this lab, but the main point is that you can use any one of our 130+ applications to contain the needle. Pretty slick eh?
Enhanced Reporting
Our reporting has also gotten a work-over. We just hired a full-time software engineer, Ryan, working on that area of the product. Ryan has only been here a short while but has been making HUGE strides in our reporting. I'll let him cover all the details in another blog post but I'll share a screenshot of the changes that are in 2.1. It's just the very beginning of the changes — watch future releases for some really great reporting enhancements.
Multi-Gigabit Stack Fuzzing
Lastly, we wouldn't be BreakingPoint if we didn't break things. One of our Network Processor engineers took the time to optimize the Stack Scrambler component. The result; multi-gigabit stack fuzzing! Break things at speeds never before seen. This component has gotten a much-needed upgrade and is now a rocket in terms of performance.
As always, there are a dozen or more features in release 2.1 that I didn't get to in this post. It should be out shortly, so take a look and tell us what you think.
