News

New security products for remote, wireless access

April 30, 2003

LAS VEGAS -- Working from an airport kiosk or Internet cafe is a good use of down time, but those areas haven't been considered the most secure environments. AEP Systems, a high-speed security solutions company, announced the release of AEP SureWare A-Gate 1.2, a secure sockets layer (SSL) VPN product with new Windows Terminal Services capability.

AEP SureWare A-Gate provides secure, remote access to internal applications and resources. The product announcement was made at the Networld+Interop show.

Said Rob Lane, vice president of product management at AEP Systems, "With this security, employees can access the corporate resources they need to work efficiently and effectively when they are away from the office."

In a report published by Infonetics Research, analysts predict that the SSL VPN market will surge to $871 million in 2005.

"Application-layer VPN products attempt to solve a deployability and management problem that many IPSec VPN users face," said Jeff Wilson, Infonetics director. "Application-layer VPN products offer an easy-to-manage, easy-to-deploy solution in these environments. SSL also makes good sense in the extranet environments, as it gets around the uncomfortable problem of installing software on computers that don't belong to you."

AEP SureWare A-Gate 1.2 includes increased performance, enhanced authentication schemes and extended key management, according to a news release. A significant addition to version 1.2 is Windows Terminal Services access, which completes the A-Gate Anywhere feature set. It extends clientless remote access beyond just Web-centric applications and allows users to avail of other corporate resources from any standard Internet browser.

Applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and legacy applications are made available to users with no requirement to pre-install client software on their computers, according to the release.

AEP SureWare A-Gate is priced at $5,000, making the hardware appliance ideal for corporate and government departments and for small and medium-sized businesses.

In other safety-related news, Everett, Wash.-based Intermec Technologies Corp. announced a wireless security services program, including vulnerability analysis and risk assessment for Intermec wireless networks and devices.

The program provides a full range of professional services for customers with an existing wireless local area network as well as for those installing new systems.

Services in the new program include a comprehensive Wireless System Risk Assessment; Secure Site Survey and Secure Site Installation to ensure effective deployment of all security features of the Intermec MobileLAN equipment; Quarterly Site Security Assessments to protect the long-term safety of a customer's wireless system; and configuration assistance for those companies whose systems include a RADIUS or Odyssey server.