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

Applications:

NetScreen DELIVERS APP FOR SECURE ONLINE MEETINGS, P2P

NetScreen Technologies Inc announced availability of the new NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances, the industry's first dedicated Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-based appliances for secure, cost-effective online meetings and application sharing sessions.

The NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances enable enterprises to instantly and securely provision online meetings, remote desktop support and conferencing sessions to hundreds of concurrent users per system without the potential security trade-offs and recurring costs of hosted services or software-based extranet deployments. The new Secure Meeting appliances provide a wealth of features including authentication and authorization, central management, cross-platform support (Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX and Linux platforms), clustering and performance scalability.

"The online meeting and collaboration market continues to expand with the growth of hosted service and software package providers," said Lou Latham, research analyst, Knowledge Workplace, Gartner Group. "We've seen recent requirements for more security in cross-enterprise collaboration. This capability delivered in an infrastructure product can equip enterprises with security functionality such as authentication, authorization and auditing when extending online meetings beyond the perimeter of their secure network. A secure collaboration appliance can reduce costs over recurring hosted service fees, as well."

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"The new Secure Meeting appliances are impressive and have the potential for cost savings compared to traditional meeting options," said Peter Lam, director of information technology for the Alameda County Office of Education. "In the past, we've used software-based solutions and though they were functional, the installation was very complex and ultimately expensive. The Secure Meeting appliance gives us greater flexibility with easy-to-use Web conferencing and online collaboration. In addition, the Secure Meeting appliance enables us to access clients' desktops as necessary without having to install software -- this is a great benefit for our organization in providing remote support. I can't wait to see their future products."

Traditional Web conferencing service providers and peer-to-peer (P2P) applications can circumvent corporate security policies, leaving the IT administrator without visibility into application sharing events. This problem can lead to unauthorized disclosures and file transfers, or the possible spread of P2P-based worms. By applying an infrastructure approach to user-to-user sessions, the Secure Meeting appliances enable enterprises to take greater control over authentication, authorization and auditing (AAA), and can prevent confidential information from leaving the network undetected or the transfer of infected files via P2P file sharing.

While hosted service providers offer travel cost savings over face-to-face meetings, they still can be expensive due to recurring monthly fee structures. Until now, alternatives to hosted services were software-based collaboration extranet deployments, which can be complex, costly and can increase an enterprise's risk profile. Extranet deployments often require custom integration for security features and increase the number of public facing services that must be hardened against attack.

Dedicated NetScreen Secure Meeting Appliances

Built upon the award-winning Neoteris Instant Virtual Extranet (IVE) platform, the new NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances can enable anytime, anywhere online meetings, real-time collaborative sessions, multi-location document review, and remote desktop support and diagnostics. New Secure Meeting appliance capabilities include:

• Application Sharing -- real-time collaboration for up to 250 concurrent users per system.
• Policy-Based AAA and Password Management - client-side certificates, two-factor authentication and LDAP integration; granular group- and role-based authorizations to control access; and detailed audit logs and recording of each event.
• Central Management -- unified policy and configuration management for Secure Meeting clusters.
• Delegated Administration and Scheduling -- system administrators can hand-off and delegate user management and scheduling to meeting operators.
• Audit Queries and Filters -- template-based queries of the meeting log for reporting purposes.
• Clustering and Fail-Over -- fault tolerant and highly available online meetings to minimize complexity.
• Customizable User Interface -- department or partner specific sign-in URL and Web pages.
• Cross-Platform Support -- supports attendees using Windows, Mac OSX and Linux platforms.

The new dedicated NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances represent an innovative SSL appliance-based approach to cost-effectively solve the security and cost problems that hinder broader adoption of cross-enterprise online meetings. Maintaining the same ease of use and simple deployment approach as the market leading NetScreen Secure Access SSL VPN appliances, the NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances have best-in-class security and require no custom software configuration or new server deployments. Users can hold secure meetings and can conduct remote desktop support and conferencing sessions via any Web browser and Internet connection, without requiring the deployment of new desktop clients.

"With the new NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances, enterprises can instantly and securely deploy a dedicated appliance that can provision application sharing and online meetings to hundreds of attendees," said Krishna Kolluri, general manager of NetScreen's secure access products. "By delivering Web-based meeting functionality without the security trade-offs and high recurring cost of traditional approaches, the NetScreen Secure Meeting appliances fundamentally change the collaboration and Web conferencing options available to enterprises."