SEATTLE -- F5 Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:FFIV - News), the global leader in Application Traffic Management, today announced a powerful upgrade of its award-winning FirePass® Controller. The new release of F5's popular Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN) solution increases its lead over competitive products and addresses the expanding application access requirements of enterprise organizations. Today's announcement of FirePass Controller encompasses: (a) Enhanced performance and doubled capacity; (b) Breakthrough usability improvements; (c) Unique client-side trust management; and (d) Added integration for the enterprise infrastructure.

"SSL VPNs have grown from pilot projects to production solutions, and companies are relying on them to enhance productivity," said John Girard, Vice-President, Mobile and Wireless Security, Gartner, Inc. "Scalability, performance, and management are top priority issues for 2005."

The latest FirePass release provides enterprises with new powerful features, plus a variety of capabilities not found in competitive products. For example, F5's solution includes unique protection against web application layer attacks and delivers the SSL VPN market's first graphical interface for defining complex policies. This tool dramatically simplifies management and lowers Total Cost of Ownership for customers.

"FirePass has enabled Coast Capital Savings to offer a greater number of users access to corporate resources and lower its TCO by dramatically decreasing support calls and reducing the need to perform remediation due to viruses," said Andrew Banman, Systems Engineer at Coast Capital Savings. "We look forward to implementing many of the new FirePass features such as the Visual Policy Editor which offer simplified management and will help our businesses drive TCO down further by automatically enforcing security policies on remote workstations."

F5 Networks Inc.