NEVIS NETWORKS UNVEILS LANENFORCER 4.0 SECURITY SOFTWARE.

Nevis Networks, Mountain View, Calif., a market leader in identity-based policy enforcement solutions that control network access and secure sensitive resources, has announced a major new operating software release for its LANenforcer LAN security solutions.

Key highlights of LANenforcer 4.0 include the following:

* Dissolvable messaging agent (runs in system tray and provides feedback loop and customized informational messages to end users)

* Identification of corporate owned assets vs. guest/contractor assets

* Policy evaluation tool (allows you to run "what if" scenarios for policy troubleshooting and planning purposes)

* Posture checks run on endpoints without admin or power user status

* Posture check for running processes

* Selective OS patch posture check (granular control down to individual KB)

* Support for Mac OSX endpoint posture check

* Application recognition and control of P2P/IM apps at 10Gbps

* Scan profiler to reduce malware false positives

* New posture check dashboard for real time monitoring and troubleshooting

* Full customized reporting in addition to existing pre-canned reports

"Security analysts and market research all indicate that NAC solutions are not living up to customer expectations, because of the immaturity of the technology and the market realization that NAC has too many moving parts," noted Dominic Wilde, Nevis' vice president of marketing. "This can be very disruptive to the existing infrastructure, and does not address the real challenges organizations are facing in managing endpoint risk. Customers have helped us to ensure that LANenforcer 4.0 operating software dramatically raises the bar in terms of a mature, full-featured LAN security solution."

Key benefits of LANenforcer 4.0 include the following:

* Dramatically improves the ease of use and deployment for network access control (NAC) and associated LAN Security solutions.

* Increases the relevance of NAC solutions to compliance and risk management initiatives as organizations seek tighter controls on systems connecting to the internal LAN.

"We had been looking at NAC solutions for some time, but felt that they were not mature enough to support our demanding multi-site global environment. A key issue for us was the transparency of the solution that would ensure no increase in helpdesk calls to our IT team, or impact to our business practices in any way," stated Mustafiz Choudhury, CIO and Chief Development Officer at Insilica, Inc., a leading semiconductor manufacturer. "The Nevis LANenforcer not only solves these problems, but goes far beyond today's NAC offerings with a more holistic LAN Security approach."

Powerful Deployment and Management Tools

LANenforcer 4.0 uniquely provides new dissolvable messaging agent functionality, which runs in the desktop system tray. The dissolvable messaging agent works for all types of users and provides them with a readily apparent means of determining whether policy enforcement actions have affected their access and how to resolve the issue without calling the helpdesk. Nevis is the first NAC or LAN security solution vendor to introduce a messaging agent, which can result in greatly reduced IT support calls from internal users and ease many fears associated with users being blindly quarantined. The new operating environment also supports selective operating system posture checks, checks for running processes, and features a new posture check dashboard that provides network administrators an overall view of endpoint status and issues to expedite remediation.

In addition, pre-connect posture checks can now identify whether endpoints attempting network access are corporate-owned assets versus guest or contractor assets as part of an extended policy enforcement strategy. Compliance initiatives generally dictate that owned assets be handled and managed differently than external systems, and Nevis puts that capability into the hands of network security administrators to facilitate policy management and enforcement.

Expanded Compliance Controls: Application Usage Policies

With the new 4.0 operating software, Nevis LANenforcer solutions can block or drop packets that do not conform to the application usage policies of the organization. This is critical for many compliance initiatives, as well as to contain the spread of malware. The first phase of Nevis application-level intelligence focuses on recognizing and enforcing granular policies around P2P and IM applications, since they provide an un-auditable communication channel between users inside and outside the organization that circumvent compliance objectives, as well as providing a conduit for the coordination of bots in a botnet such as Storm Worm.

"While IM is a legitimate business productivity tool that facilitates real time communications, these applications pose multiple security and compliance risks. Further complicating matters is how difficult IM has been to audit," said Analyst Michael Montecillo with Enterprise Management Associates. "Having visibility and being able to enforce controls on the applications and protocols running over the internal LAN is an essential component of ensuring security. Implementing these capabilities into a NAC solution is an important extension to the endpoint validation handled by NAC."

Customized NAC Reporting Tools Support Policy Development and Compliance/Audit Processes

Organizations can now design any customized report suited to their compliance and audit requirements, based on the network-wide visibility and packet analysis information gathered by the LANenforcer solutions. Examples of customized reports can answer questions such as "which hosts are sending traffic on the network", and "who (by user name) accessed various servers and applications over the last month." IT staff can now extract the specific information and views from the collected networking data to suit their needs without tedious effort.

A key reporting mechanism in the new operating software release provides a Policy Evaluation tool that runs "what if" policy troubleshooting scenarios, a first for any NAC vendor. IT staff can now develop user or role-based policies and generate reports about how the policies would impact various access controls before pushing the policies out live. This is a critical development tool that accelerates testing and deployment of new policies without adversely impacting users.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing for LANenforcer solutions starts at less than $15/per user (US list) and the 4.0 operating software is now generally available as a free upgrade to existing customers on all LANenforcer platforms.

About Nevis Networks

Nevis Networks is a market leader in secure switching and identity-based policy enforcement appliances. The company's LANenforcer product family transparently enforces identity-based policies in real time within the network fabric, tightly controlling who can access a company's network and what resources they are permitted to use. Cross-industry customers, ranging from financial services, healthcare, education and defense contractors deploy Nevis LANenforcers to protect sensitive network resources and assets, and significantly reduce the overall costs and time to resolve security breaches and conduct network audits. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with additional R&D centers in Pune, India and Beijing, China.

For more information, visit http://www.nevisnetworks.com or call 925/831-1041.