News
Heathrow, 14th January 2011
Fortinet named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management
Fortinet is recognized for both its “completeness of vision” and “ability to execute” based on evaluation of its FortiGate® multi-threat security appliances.
According to the Gartner report, the continued evolution of threats, as well as audit and regulatory demands, will require businesses to move toward the more advanced features of UTM, which include multiple security functions in a single appliance. Quantifying this growth, the Gartner report states that in 2009, the worldwide UTM market was worth approximately $1.5 billion, representing 25% growth over Gartner’s 2007 estimate, with a forecast of 20% to 25% compound annual growth rate through 2012. This market is largely driven by turnkey appliance solutions, although there are pure software UTM solutions available.
Also, as the report’s authors state: “Vendors in this quadrant lead the market in offering new safeguarding features, and in enabling customers to deploy them inexpensively without significantly affecting the end-user experience or increasing staffing burdens. These vendors also have a good track record of avoiding vulnerabilities in their security products. Common characteristics include reliability, consistent throughput, and a product that’s intuitive to manage and administer.”
“Since pioneering the UTM market 10 years ago, Fortinet has helped to address the security needs of more than 100,000 customers worldwide, including the majority of the global Fortune 100 enterprises,” said Ken Xie, founder, president and CEO of Fortinet. “We believe that our position as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Unified Threat Management is further testament to our steadfast commitment to innovation, as well as meeting the evolving security requirements of all-sized enterprises, telecommunication carriers and service providers.”
Fortinet’s FortiGate appliances provide a high-performance, consolidated array of security and networking functions including complete content protection against network, content, and application-level threats without degrading network availability and uptime. All FortiGate systems are ASIC-accelerated security appliances that integrate core security and network functionalities including firewall, SSL and IPSec VPN, antivirus, intrusion prevention, Web filtering, antispam, application control, data loss prevention, SSL traffic inspection and WAN optimization. FortiGate’s unique approach combines custom FortiASIC™ processors with latest generation general CPUs to minimize packet processing while accurately scanning the data for threats. Custom FortiASIC processors enable organizations to detect malicious content- and connection-based threats at multi-Gigabit speeds.
Download Report - http://www.fortinet.com/registration/?oid=305
Stockley Park, 21st December 2010
Armadillo Managed Services Attains Gold Certified Partner Status in Fortinet Partner Program.
Armadillo, the leading managed services company, has been accredited with ‘Gold Partner’ status by Fortinet.
Solly Khan, Technical Director at Armadillo commented ‘We are delighted to have attained The Fortinet Gold Status Accreditation. It confirms that Armadillo have successfully achieved unprecedented growth and profit by delivering superior, next generation multi-threat security solutions to our growing client base. As a Gold Partner, Armadillo has demonstrated expertise with Fortinet technologies and a proven ability to meet customer’s needs. The benefit’s provided through our Gold Certified Partner status will allow us to continue to enhance the offerings that we provide to our customer’s”.
“Customers are looking for partner companies that can bridge the gap between their business demands and technology capabilities” said Paul Judd, Regional Director UKI & ZA at Fortinet. “They need to trust in a company that can act as an expert adviser for their long-term strategic technology plans. We congratulate Armadillo on achieving their Gold Partner accreditation. Dedicated partners like Armadillo help us to build a strong presence in EMEA whilst helping to educate the market on the importance of implementing comprehensive security in the enterprise. Armadillo has repeatedly proven itself to be a very knowledgeable, trustworthy and reputable business partner”.
Heathrow, 5th October 2010
RSA Names Armadillo “EMEA Signature Partner of the Year”
Armadillo collects top award at RSA European Partner Council in Barcelona.
Armadillo, the leading managed services company, has been selected by RSA as the 2010 EMEA Signature Partner of the Year at the Barcelona RSA European Partner Council. The award recognises Armadillo’s sustained investment, high levels of technical expertise and strong customer endorsement for its team of security consultants. It is also a testament to its proven track record for integrating and supporting solutions into the most complex and challenging environments to address security and compliance issues.
Mark Newns, CEO at Armadillo Managed Services commented “This award cements the fact that Armadillo has, once again, proved its commitment to the RSA Signature Partner Program. It also underlines that Armadillo’s status, as the leading RSA Partner in EMEA, is built on the expertise of its security consultants, who are considered to be the best in the business. The award endorses the hard work and commitment the Armadillo team has continued to make in both integrating and supporting SecurID, envision and DLP into its growing client base.”
The RSA EMEA Awards are made annually at the company’s European Partner Council Event. Armadillo has been a previous winner of RSA EMEA Awards in 2006 & 2007 as well as winning awards from other vendors including Tufin Technologies, Gold Reseller of the year 2010 and Project of the Year at the Channel Expo Awards in 2007.
“Armadillo and RSA have a very long standing and established relationship that spans over a decade”, said Bruno Borremans the EMEA Director Channels & Strategic Alliances at RSA Security. “Armadillo has embraced the RSA strategy and by being certified both commercially and technically across our suite of offerings is able to provide great value and expertise to our joint customers.
“With one of the largest RSA customer bases in the EMEA Region, Armadillo have a wealth of knowledge of what customers need and in turn work closely with us to provide feedback and help to shape the direction for the future. Armadillo is one of only five Signature Partners across Europe and has repeatedly proven itself to be a very knowledgeable, trustworthy and reputable organisation.”
For further information please contact: lcook@armadillouk.com
Stockley Park, 31st August 2010
As a result of continued growth Armadillo have relocated to larger premises in the Heathrow area. Our new address is Capital Place, 120 Bath Road, Heathrow, Middlesex, UB3 5AN.
All business communication remains the same.
The increased floor space enables us to facilitate our long term aggressive growth plans and will also enable us to deliver even greater levels of service and support to our valued customers.
120 Bath Road is a short taxi ride to Heathrow Airport’s terminals and hotels, so this is the perfect location for Armadillo to support our international client base.
The business centre is close to junctions 3 and 4 of the M4 motorway, which links London with key industrial centres such as Swindon, Reading, Bristol, Newport and Cardiff.
The M25 London orbital is easily reached, giving access to all of the motorways emanating from London.
Stockley Park, 22nd June 2010
FirePass® 7.0 release improves SSL VPN functionality, scalability, third-party integration, and offers new flexible deployment options including a virtual appliance
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), today announced a new version of its FirePass SSL VPN solution. With the 7.0 release, FirePass provides enhanced access capabilities, improved IT management through integrated access services with third-party solutions, and flexible deployment options, including an SSL VPN virtual appliance running on VMware vSphere, FirePass Virtual Edition (VE).
Details
FirePass provides browser-based access to organizations’ applications, networks, and data, and employs customizable access policies to ensure all devices accessing corporate information adhere to a company’s specific requirements.
“Remote access creates continuous market demand for new virtual private network (VPN) products and services, including virtual solutions,” said John Girard, VP Distinguished Analyst with Gartner, Inc. “Business continuity and telework are creating new opportunities for companies working through upgrades and replacement cycles to replace legacy remote-access VPNs. Even if you have sufficient capacity to handle increased demands in your VPN gateway based on these new trends, it will do you no good if your network services cannot scale.”
With FirePass, enterprises can manage employee and external access to business applications, keep mobile users connected, and enforce compliance mandates such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS. Highlights of the new FirePass version 7.0 include:
- Flexible Deployment Options, Including a Virtual Appliance
F5 now offers customers the ability to deploy FirePass on both physical and virtual platforms, with FirePass VE delivering all the traditional functionality of its physical counterpart. F5’s virtual deployment options—including the recently announced BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™ Virtual Edition—provide a powerful way for organizations to reduce CapEx and OpEx costs by controlling the number of physical devices in their IT infrastructure. With FirePass VE, customers gain the valuable flexibility to add remote access capabilities to their existing virtual environments while maintaining emergency capacity in case of an unexpected event.
In addition, with this new version, FirePass now interoperates with both the FirePass Client and the new BIG-IP Edge Client™. The BIG-IP Edge Client provides advanced roaming, domain detection, and automatic connection, helping users stay connected when transitioning between locations. - Advanced Endpoint Security and Enhanced User Experience
FirePass 7.0 includes enhanced endpoint security features for Mac and Linux environments, including updated antivirus, firewall, and anti-malware software detection capabilities. This new version reduces risk of data loss with upgraded features, including Protected Workspace for 64-bit operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 7.
FirePass ensures users receive continuous, seamless access from any authorized device whether they are at home, on a wireless network, or connected via a guest network. With the BIG-IP Edge Client, FirePass can also automatically detect domain changes to connect or reconnect to network resources (even after losing a VPN connection) or halt VPN access when the user connects to a secure LAN. - Improved Ease of Management with Integrated Access Services
FirePass 7.0 features advanced hardware identification to help IT administrators identify unauthorized devices and block access to corporate networks and materials as appropriate. Additionally, customers who use VMware virtualization tools in their data center can now use those same management tools to manage SSL VPN capability within their virtual desktop infrastructure. FirePass integration with the VMware View web client allows customers to quickly and easily deploy VMware View for remote users without requiring an additional client installation. Also, FirePass now enhances access to Xen Presentation Server, sending Smart Access filters to XenApp/Presentation Server based on the results of the endpoint inspections.
Official Press release and more information HERE
Stockley Park, 15th April 2010
RSA, The Security Division of EMC, announces Service Pack 3 for RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 and RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0.
Service Pack 3 (SP3) for RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 and RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0 is a significant service pack release which includes key security updates, numerous fixes and enhancements in areas such as scheduled backups, SDK update, schema documentation for SQL Queries, ODA/SMS token request directly from agents and a simpler patch installation process.
Platforms:
SP3 is available to ship today as a patch for both the RSA Authentication Manager Software and the RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0. Software versions include: Windows Server 2003 (32/64-bit) Standard and Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES/AS 4.0 (32/64-bit) and Solaris 10.
Both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.7 (32-bit and 64-bit) and Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2 (32-bit and 64-bit) hosted on VM ESX 3.5* and VM ESX 4.0* have been qualified.
Security Update
Service Pack 3 (SP3) for RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 provides fixes for potential security vulnerabilities that could affect the RSA Authentication Manager. Please read the release notes for more information.
Affected Products:
- RSA Authentication Manager 7.1
- RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 SP2
- RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0
- RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0 SP2
Description:
The following features and enhancements are included in Service Pack 3:
- A rollup of all hotfixes since the RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 Service Pack 2 and RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0 Service Pack 2 release
- Fixes for potential security vulnerabilities
- An improved and simplified installation process that seamlessly incorporates the RSA Authentication Database
- MMC console (Appliance only)
- Scheduled backups from the Operations Console (Appliance only)
- Remote boot capability from the Operations Console (Appliance only)
- Auto-registration of agents is now enabled by default
- On-Demand Authentication (ODA) and SMS token code requests are now directly supported from agents
- Additional database schema documentation that enables the creation of custom SQL queries from the RSA Authentication Manager internal database and/or LDAP Identity Source to supplement report information available through the RSA Security Console
- Release of the RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 SDK which is available for both the appliance and software versions and includes numerous improvements.
- The ability to create custom user and user group searches using the RSA Authentication Manager SDK. A defect has also been fixed that allows large token search queries using the SDK.
Recommendation:
Customers using older versions of the RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 and Appliance 3.0, including SP2, are recommended to upgrade to Service Pack 3 at their earliest possible convenience to ensure they have the latest bug fixes and security vulnerability fixes. Customers must be at RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 SP2 or RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0 SP2 before they can upgrade to SP3.
(*) The following VMware ESX 4.0 features are supported: Cloning, Physical to virtual conversion, Virtual to physical conversion Advanced VMware infrastructure features such as Snapshots, VMotion, DRS, HA and Consolidated Backup are not supported. RSA recommends that customers use the features built in to RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 for these types of services.
Obtaining Documentation:
To obtain RSA documentation, log on to RSA SecurCare Online at https://knowledge.rsasecurity.com and click Products in the top navigation menu. Select the specific product whose documentation you want to obtain. Scroll to the section for the product version that you want and click the set link.
Obtaining More Information:
For more information about RSA SecurID, visit the RSA web site at http://www.rsa.com/node.aspx?id=1156
Stockley Park, 1st February 2010
F5’s BIG-IP Edge Gateway Solution Provides Breakthrough Approach to Unifying and Optimizing Access to the Data Center
New BIG-IP® solution provides enterprises with key ‘edge-of-network’ services, integrating remote access, access optimization, site-to-site security, and application acceleration to support remote and mobile workforces
F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced the new BIG-IP® Edge Gateway™ product, providing enterprise organizations with a high performance, next-generation remote access solution that delivers LAN-speed application performance for remote and mobile workers. This solution effectively solves the challenges that enterprise IT personnel face due to the massive growth of mobile and remote users. With BIG-IP Edge Gateway, F5 provides the first Application Delivery Controller (ADC) on the market that unifies secure SSL VPN access, dynamic access and optimization control, and application acceleration for remote users—regardless of the device or access network—on a single, scalable platform.
Details
With this release, F5 continues to deliver on its vision of unifying its ADC solution set and redefining how customers implement, share, and cost-effectively extend their Application Delivery Network all the way to the client. With approximately five times the scaling capability and up to an eight times improvement in application performance, the BIG-IP Edge Gateway offers enterprises significant ROI at less than half the cost of alternative, disparate technologies.
The new BIG-IP Edge Gateway enables customers to:
- Dramatically Reduce CapEx with Unified Services and Simplified Management The BIG-IP Edge Gateway solution simplifies device management by ensuring access across heterogeneous applications services, access networks, and data resources. With the free BIG-IP Edge Client™ solution—included with BIG-IP Edge Gateway—customers can combine acceleration, endpoint security, and automatic network roaming persistence for an improved end-user experience and increased workforce efficiency. In addition, web application acceleration yields significant performance gains for remote and mobile users.
- Provide Secure, Accelerated Remote Access that Easily Scales to Support User Demand
BIG-IP Edge Gateway enables organizations to cost-effectively scale their access networks to unprecedented levels. The solution accelerates and optimizes applications, yielding LAN-speed performance gains (up to eight times faster), and ensures that users are always seamlessly connected via F5’s new BIG-IP Edge Client™ with smart connection technology. Smart connection technology’s unique persistence and access intelligence makes sure that as a user roams networks—wireless (802.11), cell (3G and LTE), or wired—they stay connected, and the integrity of their application session is protected. The client also includes best-in-class endpoint security and unique application and network acceleration. - Implement Context-Aware Networking through Access Policy EnforcementBIG-IP Edge Gateway offers granular access policy enforcement. With features such as Visual Policy Editor (VPE), plus integrated authentication and endpoint inspection, access management becomes simpler, centralized, and more cost-effective. Now, IT staff can provide application access based on context by taking into account the user’s policy, identifying user location for redirection to local resources, and supporting single sign-on for most directory services across all application types, devices, and operating systems. This capability significantly reduces both cost and complexity.
- Prioritize Applications for Optimal Performance and User Productivity
With BIG-IP Edge Gateway, IT staff can design application prioritization into access policies to ensure that bandwidth is reserved for high priority applications. For example, VoIP traffic can be managed and prioritized so it is always clear, instead of choppy due to packet loss and latency. Furthermore, with F5’s unique client-side QoS functions, customers have the superior service levels they need to increase user productivity.
Official Press release and more information HERE
Stockley Park, 19th January 2010
iPass Unveils Open Platform for Global Enterprise Mobility Services
New cloud-based offering enables enterprises to deploy their own carrier independent mobility services; delivers real-time cost control, security and intelligence at the point of connection
iPass today announced the iPass Open Mobile Platform. The new cloud-based platform gives enterprises choice and flexibility to cost-effectively implement and manage their own mobility strategy by mixing and matching any network or device without requiring changes in infrastructure or disrupting the mobile worker’s connectivity experience.
Designed to significantly improve the economics of mobility, the iPass Open Mobile Platform provides the foundation for an expanded portfolio of enterprise mobility services that enables carrier independence, contains expensive connectivity costs, decreases end-user support costs and reduces the administrative burden of managing a mobile workforce.
“The sheer volume of mobile workers and their demands for IT to support a wide range of personal mobile devices, operating systems, and applications are pushing the enterprise mobility market towards increased complexity. Today’s IT departments face the costly challenge of adequately managing and securing what have often become very fragmented mobility solutions,” said Eric Paulak, managing vice president, Network Services and Infrastructure at Gartner Group. “Enterprises are looking for solutions to manage the cost, complexity, and headache of managing and securing a network of siloed products by providing a unified platform that makes it easy for IT to manage multiple devices, policies, and access methods in real time.”
“The most obvious benefit of the iPass services is that we now have a standardized way of connecting to the network in more or less any country in the world. For the users, this solution takes away all the complexity of getting online in a foreign country and means that they can be productive much more quickly,” said Henk Elzenaar, service delivery manager for product line network and telecom at Philips. “For us, it gives reassurance that when users get online; we know they’re doing so in a secure and predictable manner. And for the business units, it means there is absolute transparency of connectivity costs.”
The expanded portfolio of enterprise mobility services are designed to give enterprise IT full visibility into their mobile usage, and to orchestrate policy-based access at the point of connection, while offering employees a simple, secure and seamless connectivity experience. The portfolio includes:
iPass Mobile Connect – a new service that orchestrates policy-based Internet and corporate access through the iPass Open Mobile Client, always on lightweight software that runs on the mobile device. The service collects and transmits data from the mobile device to the enterprise via the iPass Open Mobile Portal, and interfaces with other client software and internal IT systems as needed.
iPass Mobile Insight – a new service that offers companies in-depth reporting and analysis on mobile usage across all their networks and devices. Using the iPass Open Mobile Portal, IT administrators can design and customize sophisticated reports that are driven by the iPass patented SQM data collection system, and monitor 24X7 usage, cost and compliance by division.
iPass Mobile Control – a new powerful policy enforcement service that enables IT staff to apply and enforce cost, security and compliance measures across the mobile workforce by deploying a wide variety of connectivity and device oriented policies in real-time. Combined with iPass Mobile Insight companies can use real-world usage behavior to create policies.
iPass Mobile Network – the world’s largest wireless broadband network. With over 140,000 access points around the world, and support for Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia and many other devices as well as all major desktop operating systems.
“Our vision is to be the champion for the enterprise in the mobility space, and provide the enterprise with their own carrier-independent and device-agnostic mobility solution that meets their unique set of requirements and drives ease-of-use for their employees,” said Evan Kaplan, CEO of iPass. “With a new open platform and flexible service offerings, enterprises can completely customize, adapt, and manage enterprise mobility as they please through one unified solution.”
The extensible iPass Open Mobile Platform is built on a proven cloud-based infrastructure, which handles a quarter of a million transactions a day, with seven data centers around the world, service gateways at hundreds of provider networks and thousands of enterprise customer sites. It allows iPass services to support any network and the broadest range of devices in the industry. The platform already supports over 140 3G devices and through the iPass Open Device Framework customers and partners can integrate new devices in a matter of hours.
“Our customers demand choice and flexibility,” said Patrick Schütz, head of Corporate Sales, Products and Innovation, at Deutsche Telekom AG. “The iPass Open Mobile platform and its open device framework allow our business customers to integrate 3G devices and embedded modules quickly, easily and reliably into our unique global Corporate Access mobility solution.”
For more information - http://www3.ipass.com/
Stockley Park, 16th November 2009
New Advanced Web Security Solutions
F5 Delivers Advanced Web Security Solutions to Help Customers Efficiently Address Threats to Web Applications and Enhance Business Performance
New release of F5 BIG-IP software offers innovative web security capabilities to protect businesses from costly attacks, ensure compliance, streamline management, and optimize application performance
Official Press release and more information HERE
BIG-IP v10.1 Helps Carriers Scale Mobile Infrastructures
The new BIG-IP v10.1 release offers a new approach to mobile infrastructure scaling, enabling service providers and system integrators to benefit from L7 traffic management for their AAA infrastructure.
Key benefits include:
• Support for Diameter and RADIUS protocols
• On-demand capacity to handle highest levels of traffic
• Carrier-class availability with Fast Failover
• Seamless strategy for migration as IPv6 traffic grows
• Total traffic control with iRules
Stockley Park, 30th October 2009
Available today, Service Pack 2 (SP2) for RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 and RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0 is a significant update including numerous fixes and enhancements in key areas such as software installation, Appliance quick setup, replication, backup & recovery and RADIUS.
For software platforms, SP2 is available both as a patch for existing installations and as a full installation kit for new deployments. For the existing SecurID Appliances, SP2 includes both a patch and a new factory image. With this release, RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 SP2 becomes the default shipping release for all software platforms and for the RSA SecurID Appliance.
The following features and enhancements are included in Service Pack 2:
• A rollup of all hotfixes from the original release of RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 to September 14, 2009
• Improved installation and configuration of replicas, as well as improved replication stability
• New disaster recovery options including primary database restore and replica resynchronization
• Improved and simplified installation process
• Support for Active Directory 2008 as an identity source
• New option for generating reports without applying a date/time filter
• Improvements to the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-in
• Enhanced procedure for migrating from RSA SecurID Appliance 2.0 to RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0 that includes the preservation fo RADIUS configuration data
SP2 is available on SecurCare Online for the following platforms: RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0, Windows Server 2003, (32/64-bit) Standard and Enterprise, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES/AS 4.0 (32/64-bit), Solaris 10 and VMWare ESX 3.5 (hosting Windows Server 2003).
RSA Positioning and Recommendations
The goal of SP2 is to improve the overall stability of AM 7.1 and RSA’s ability to support the product. The focus of the release is stabilization of critical areas that cannot be addressed with hot fixes alone including installation, replication and backup & restore.
Recommendation:
For customers of RSA Authentication Manager 7.1 and RSA SecurID Appliance 3.0, RSA strongly recommends upgrading to SP2 as soon as possible. For existing installations, the Database Patch must be installed before applying SP2.
For RSA Authentication Manager 6.x customers planning an upgrade, RSA strongly recommends migrating directly to SP2 using the new full-kit installer. For new installations (including migrations from RSA Authentication Manager 6.x), the full-kit installer includes both SP2 and the Database Patch.
