News

Security vendor tackles remote access

October 9, 2003

SEATTLE -- As remote access gains acceptance among business executives, technology vendors are adding features to make management simpler and to beef up security.

According to a Network World Fusion article, F5 Networks has an appliance that aims to ensure the integrity of remote machines.

F5 SSL (secure socket layer) gear can check whether remote computers are running appropriate security software before allowing them to access corporate servers.

With version 4.0 of its FirePass Controller software, the company enables checking that personal firewalls and anti-virus software are operating on computers that attempt to connect over the Internet to corporate networks via FirePass appliances. The software also guards against inappropriate processes on the remote machines, the article said.

The gear does this by recognizing a computer by a certificate issued to the machine and then probing to see whether, for example, the machine has a personal firewall operating. If the remote machine lacks such a certificate, it can be granted restricted access.

If a remote machine lacks such a certificate, FirePass Controller can purge caches or temporary files stored on it during the secure session. This is to prevent subsequent users from accessing sensitive data if the machine is publicly accessible, such as an Internet kiosk machine.