Avenda Systems Announces New Security Enhancements For Endpoint Control

Santa Clara, Calif. -- Oct. 12, 2010 – Avenda Systems, the innovation leader in network access security, today announced Avenda OnGuard, a new family of network access agents, as well as enhanced support of External Captive Portals for Meru wireless controllers and Cisco switches. These new enhancements position Avenda’s flagship eTIPS network access control and AAA platform as the industry’s most feature-rich solution for managing access privileges across early and current Windows versions, Mac OS X, and Linux operating systems using standards-based, 802.1X or non-802.1X security methods.

Deployed in conjunction with eTIPS 3.5, Avenda’s OnGuard agents enable organizations to proactively manage the use of peer-to-peer applications and services on their networks and send system wide, network notifications to its users. For example, users can be notified of digital rights management (DRM) violations and associated corrective action. Additionally, users can be removed or bounced from the network, or blacklisted if they are not in compliance with an organization’s standard policy requirements. The health status of devices – such as anti-malware, firewall, peer-to-peer and the latest patches – can also be used to create a deeper level of compliance policies.

“Avenda’s new OnGuard agents provide a seamless way to monitor user and device information while taking advantage of legacy security mechanisms,” said John Call, Systems and Network analyst at BYU– Hawaii. “I can see how the additional visibility and safeguards would benefit education and enterprise organizations alike – for not only security, but also for network troubleshooting and compliance mandates as well.”

New support of external captive portals for Meru wireless controllers and Cisco Ethernet switches enables organizations to offload web-based authentication to Avenda’s eTIPS and add endpoint health checking that the Meru and Cisco devices cannot perform on their own. This enables the use of external laptops by guests, partners, contractors and employees by authenticating devices against specific access policies created for users’ roles.

“Avenda’s latest release allows us to continue our technical leadership by enhancing our overall solution based on customer feedback and evolving industry requirements,” said Santhosh Cheeniyil, VP of Engineering at Avenda Systems. “With the introduction of eTIPS 3.5, these new applications and additional platform enhancements provide the industry’s only full-featured network access security platform for any use-case, any environment.”

Highlights of Avenda’s new release include the following industry firsts:

Ability to apply consistent network access security and endpoint health checks in a mix of 802.1X and non-802.1X (SNMP and SSH) environments

Greater visibility and control across all operating system versions – agent and agentless alternatives

Enhanced compliance management of Peer-to-Peer applications, services and anti-malware

Availability

The new OnGuard agents, external captive portal support, and Avenda’s eTIPS 3.5 release will be available directly from Avenda and authorized partners in early November.

About Avenda

Avenda’s Identity-based access control platform delivers industry proven employee, guest and endpoint access management for multi-vendor wired, wireless and VPN networks. Avenda has been recognized for innovation excellence, including being positioned as a Visionary in Gartner’s 2010 Magic Quadrant for Network Access Control report, and being named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Identity and Access Management, 2010. Further information: http://www.avendasys.com