Network security appliance

A security appliance for protecting one or more networked devices downstream of the security appliance in a data network, the security appliance comprising:

• a processor;
• a heartbeat module executable by the processor for transmitting a status signal to a management server in the data network, utilizing the address associated with one of the networked devices as the originating address for the packet;
• a communications module executable by the processor for processing packets transmitted from the management server and addressed to one of the networked devices downstream of the security appliance, the communications module extracting data embedded in the packets for management of the security appliance;
• and
• one or more security modules configurable by the management server and executable by the processor, the modules providing security management on data transiting the security appliance between the one or more networked devices downstream of the security appliance and other devices on the data network based upon security profiles associated with the one or more networked devices downstream of the security appliance, the security profiles determined by device attributes of the one or more networked devices downstream of the security appliance.

A data network comprising:

• a plurality of security appliances, each security appliance associated with one or more of a plurality of networked devices, wherein each security appliance transparently bridges the one or more associated networked devices to the data network and provides management of data communications traversing to and from the one or more associated networked devices and other devices coupled to the data network based upon security profiles associated with attributes of the one or more associated networked devices;
• a management server for managing the plurality of security appliances and providing the security profiles to the security appliances that are associated with the networked devices with which the security profiles are associated;
• and
• wherein the management server communicates with the plurality of security appliances by utilizing an address of one of the associated networked devices and the plurality of security appliances periodically sends a status message to the management server utilizing address information of an associated networked device as the source of the status message.