SecurityWatch

Endpoint security

Government and private-sector officials are looking to enforce security on the endpoints of a network — the workstations and laptops — where data actually resides, especially as more employees work remotely.

To that end, Zone Labs Inc. last week moved to strengthen policy enforcement inside and outside corporate boundaries. The company rolled out a new version of its endpoint security product, Integrity 4.5. The software provides capabilities to enforce policies on all PCs accessing an organization's network. It also allows organizations to secure employees' use of public instant messaging services and prevent users from accessing the network with unauthorized wireless devices.

Support for the Extensible Authentication Protocol and 802.1x allows Integrity 4.5 to integrate with more than 200 network devices, such as switches and wireless access points from more than 22 vendors, including Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2003 Remote Access Server and Cisco Systems Inc.'s Aironet wireless access points.

This allows network administrators to enforce the most comprehensive endpoint security policies on devices that access the network — whether inside or outside an organization's boundary, according to Fred Feldman, vice president of marketing at Zone Labs.

Integrity "allows [administrators] to deny access to systems if people do not meet [certain] criteria," Feldman said. With Integrity 4.5, administrators "can apply [firewall] rules to applications or one set of rules for all users."

Application firewall

Secure Computing Corp., known for its advanced firewall capability, last week rolled out a new version of its Sidewinder G2 Firewall, which has increased protection for application-level attacks.

Sidewinder G2 Firewall Version 6.1 provides added protection for Web services, e-mail, Oracle Corp. databases, and instant messaging and peer-to-peer communications that bypass corporate e-mail exchanges, according to company officials. n