DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /    ( Table of Contents )

Breaking News - Security:

Aventail Unveils Secure Desktop

Aventail Corp, a leading SSL VPN product company, announced the unveiling of Aventail Secure Desktop and an enhanced version of Aventail Cache Control. Aventail's latest offerings seamlessly integrate into Aventail's award-winning SSL VPN appliance, delivering the most advanced solution for helping IT manage and protect anywhere access to critical network resources from airport kiosks, wireless hot spots, employee-owned PCs and PDAs. With Aventail Secure Desktop and Aventail Cache Control, companies can feel confident about extending secure remote access from non-corporate-owned equipment by creating an encrypted virtual desktop environment and then erasing the data from the system upon termination of the session.

"While most vendors are only addressing a sliver of the endpoint control problem, Aventail continues to take a leadership position in not only defining its requirements but in delivering a complete solution that effectively protects corporations from unnecessary security breaches," said Zeus Kerravala, vice president of enterprise infrastructure for The Yankee Group.

Web services, utility computing, .NET, CPU harvesting and distributed computing are just a few of the technologies that fall under the Grid computing umbrella. Gt04 -- a premiere enterprise Grid computing conference targeting industrial and commercial users -- will gather experts, and outline strategies and road maps for Grid deployment. For more information, visit www.gt04.com.

Grid computing is here!

"We did an extensive evaluation of all SSL VPN appliance vendors and chose Aventail because of their proven reputation for delivering a highly secure remote access platform," said Bruno Lambert, IT manager at Cranium. "The Aventail EX-1500 gives our employees the freedom of accessing corporate resources from kiosks, Internet cafes, and their home computers. Aventail's new offering will significantly benefit us by ensuring that our information is secure and our privacy policies are protected, no matter where our employees access company information."

Aventail: Raising The Bar On End Point Control

With the adoption of SSL VPNs, companies can provide unprecedented access to Web and client/server applications from any non-corporate-owned device with a Web browser. However, this level of access is not without risks. Since Web browsers cache all data on public computers, end-users unknowingly leave sensitive information such as passwords, cookies, and documents stored on the computer -- especially if the user fails to logoff.

While most SSL VPN vendors offer basic cache cleaning capabilities that remove Web pages, temporary files, and viewed e-mail attachments, the enhanced version of Aventail Cache Control takes cleaning to another level by also removing browser history, cookies, auto-complete or stored passwords, and temporary or downloaded files from any Windows, Macintosh and Linux-supported device -- even if the user walks away. Also, unlike other solutions, which inadvertently delete valuable stored information from a user's home machine, Aventail Cache Control only removes the current session's cached data.

Aventail Secure Desktop provides an even stronger solution for endpoint security by creating an "encrypted vault" where all data that is downloaded in a Web session -- attachments, cookies, cached content and the like -- is safely stored. Users see a virtual workspace with a "padlock" symbol to let them know that their session is being secured and that they can browse Web sites or run other applications without leaving a trail. At the end of their session, their virtual workspace and encrypted vault are destroyed, erasing any information that was viewed or saved. To ensure a best-of-breed SSL VPN data protection product, Aventail licensed technology from its partner Sygate, the leader in Enterprise Endpoint Security.

Using the Aventail Management Console (AMC), the centralized policy management interface for Aventail's SSL VPN appliances, configuration and management of Aventail Secure Desktop and Aventail Cache Control is simple. IT managers can use AMC to define policies on multiple parameters, including the duration before an inactivity timeout is triggered, forcing all browser windows to close and the data protection agent to run. They can also allow or prohibit an Aventail Secure Desktop user from printing files and saving information to a disk or between sessions.

"Aventail Secure Desktop and Aventail Cache Control further advance the competitive advantages of our EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance, which offers the industry's best solution for securing remote access and protecting browser-side security," said Sarah Daniels, vice president of product management and marketing for Aventail. "With Aventail, enterprises not only obtain the SSL VPN with the broadest access capabilities, but also the best solution for enforcing security policies and protecting confidential data from risky endpoints."