The Cisco ASA 5540 Adaptive Security Appliance delivers high-performance, high-density security services with Active/Active high availability and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity for medium-sized and large enterprise and service-provider networks, in a reliable, modular appliance. With four Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and support for up to 100 VLANs, businesses can use the Cisco ASA 5540 to segment their network into numerous zones for improved security. The Cisco ASA 5540 Adaptive Security Appliance scales with businesses as their network security requirements grow, delivering exceptional investment protection and services scalability. The advanced network and application-layer security services and content security defenses provided by the Cisco ASA 5540 Adaptive Security Appliance can be extended by deploying the AIP SSM for high-performance intrusion prevention and worm mitigation.

Businesses can scale their SSL and IPsec VPN capacity to support a larger number of mobile workers, remote sites, and business partners. Businesses can scale up to 2500 SSL VPN peers on each Cisco ASA 5540 by installing an SSL VPN upgrade license; 5000 IPsec VPN peers are supported on the base platform. VPN capacity and resiliency can also be increased by taking advantage of the Cisco ASA 5540's integrated VPN clustering and load-balancing capabilities. The Cisco ASA 5540 supports up to 10 appliances in a cluster, supporting a maximum of 25,000 SSL VPN peers or 50,000 IPsec VPN peers per cluster. For business continuity and event planning, the ASA 5540 can also benefit from the Cisco VPN FLEX licenses, which enable administrators to react to or plan for short-term bursts of concurrent SSL VPN remote-access users, for up to a 2-month period.

Using the optional security context capabilities of the Cisco ASA 5540 Adaptive Security Appliance, businesses can deploy up to 50 virtual firewalls within an appliance to enable compartmentalized control of security policies on a per-department or per-customer basis, and deliver reduced overall management and support costs.

Table 4 lists features of the Cisco ASA 5540.