Patriot offers NT-based product on GSA sked

Patriot Technologies Inc. has won an exclusive General Services Administration contract to offer one of the first Microsoft Corp. Windows NT firewalls that also includes ActiveX protection.

Gaithersburg Md.-based Patriot will provide Global Internet's Centri Firewall 3.1.1 a security product specifically designed from the ground up for Windows NT enterprise networks. Centri offers a secure network environment with an application proxy architecture using authentication Web filtering and caching as well as support for Secure Socket Layer with Hypertext Transport Protocol. Other features include packet filtering and network address translation.

The Complete Package

Agencies can purchase the Centri Firewall from the GSA schedule for systems with 200 nodes or less. The company will also be offering a one-year software update maintenance program. Bruce Tucker Patriot's executive vice president said the company is negotiating the sale of the firewall to a large unit of the federal judiciary. Patriot can provide a complete turnkey firewall for agencies including hardware software and security policy guidelines he said. Also the Java protection component of the product will become central to the government as users increasingly move to incorporate Java.

"It's safe to say Java - at least in the commercial space - is taking over the world...the government is going to go the same way " Tucker said.

In addition to blocking ActiveX applets Centri Firewall offers an upgrade to MetaInfo's Sendmail for improved performance and mail handling. The upgrade also enables Uniform Resource Locator logging which allows tracking of World Wide Web usage.

Tucker said Patriot plans to add to its GSA schedule soon a tool set that can be loaded on a server to scan a network for holes that could compromise security.

Agencies will be able to purchase the software to scan their own networks or Patriot employees will dial in and perform the scanning for them.

A license for Centri Firewall for networks with 50 nodes or less is listed at $4 117 and a license for a network with 50 to 200 nodes costs $8 235. The cost of software updates and hot line telephone support is $1 500. Interested users can obtain a free copy of the Centri Firewall to test for 45 days.