New Features
Firewall features
• Network object optimization: Optimizing the way rules are compiled and stored in memory improves firewall performance for customers with large security policies and those who make extensive use of objects when defining security policies.
• ACL time stamp: Administrators can better manage firewall policies by marking each rule with a time stamp for when it was last hit.
• Threat defense optimizations: The threat scanning engine's performance has increased by 20 percent while its memory usage has decreased by 60 percent.
• Cisco.com Upgrade Wizard: Enhancements to the wizard improve its usability and btter support future software releases.
• Global firewall rules (access control lists [ACLs]): Enabling the creation of rules that are not bound to a specific physical or virtual interface greatly increases deployment flexibility for firewall policies.
• IP options: Support for passing through or clearing options fields of the IP packet header has been added, as has conformance to RFC 2113.
• Network objects: Enabling hosts, subnets, and address ranges to be defined as objects that can be used in firewall and Network Address Translation (NAT) policies improves how those policies are structured and organized.
• NAT enhancements: Adopting an "original packet" and "translated packet" approach significantly improves flexibility and reduces the complexity of network and port address translation.
• Password encryption: Passwords that are stored in the device configuration can be encrypted.
• Smart Call-Home: This feature provides diagnostic information to Cisco technical support, helping to reduce time to repair and network downtime.
• Real IP: ACLs can be configured using the real IP address of hosts instead of using translated values when NAT configurations are present.
• Botnet Traffic Filter enhancements: Enhanced reporting capabilities and improved traffic blocking features enable customers to better defend their networks.
Remote-access features
• New OS support for Clientless Access: Support for clientless remote access is now included for Windows XP (64-bit), Windows Vista (64-bit), Windows 7 (32- and 64-bit), MacOS 10.5 (64-bit), and MacOS 10.6 (32- and 64-sbit).
• IPv6 IPsec Site-to-Site VPN: Customers can now create encrypted IPsec VPN connections over IPv6 networks
• Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility: This feature provides an "always-on" SSL VPN connection from a mobile user, which is passed on to a Cisco IronPort® S-Series Web Security Appliance for content filtering.
• VPN filter optimization: Improves the performance and scalability of VPN deployments that use ACL filters to secure tunneled traffic.
Cisco Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) features:
• VPN Wizard: The Cisco ASDM VPN Wizard now enables customers to create site-to-site IPsec VPNs over IPv6.
• IPS Startup Wizard: A step-by-step configuration wizard facilitates simplified provisioning of AIP SSMs.
• "Top Talkers": Identifies the top 200 hosts based on the number of connections they have initiated through the Cisco ASA appliance.
• Route maps: Customers can configure route maps through Cisco ASDM.
• Botnet Traffic Filter reports: After detecting malicious traffic, the filter analyzes the traffic and provides a number of reports, enabling administrators to remediate the issue.
• AnyConnect Profile Editor: Integrates Cisco ASDM support for the creation of profiles for AnyConnect users, eliminating the need to manually create configuration files.
Unified Communications features:
• Intercompany Media Engine: New licensing and support for the Cisco Intercompany Media Engine solution enables customers to offload communications from the PSTN to Internet-based Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunks.
Licensing changes:
• Cisco ASA Software Release 8.3 introduces several changes to the behavior of licenses. Please refer to the licensing bulletin for details.
• Time-based license stacking: Customers can extend time-based licenses such as Botnet Traffic Filter and SSL VPN Burst by applying multiple licenses.
• Licensing of high-availability pairs: For several features, the requirement to deploy identical licenses on the standby unit in a high-availability pair has been removed. Security Plus licenses must still be purchased for both the Active and Standby units.
Memory Requirements
Table 1. Memory Requirements for Cisco ASA Software Release 8.3
Upgrade Paths
Ordering Information
Table 2. Ordering Information
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