Bridgewater College Selects Nevis Networks for its High-performance Inline Identity-based Policy Enforcement Capabilities
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – July 22nd 2008 – Nevis Networks, a market leader in secure switching and identity-based policy enforcement appliances, today announced that Bridgewater College has selected LANenforcer security appliances to secure its campus networks. Bridgwaters’ IT staff chose the Nevis LANenforcer for its unique in-line, identity-based access control, real-time policy enforcement and comprehensive reporting for regulatory compliance. The ability to block malicious code and scan endpoints prior to granting network access, including those with the Microsoft Vista operating system, were also essential for security in a university environment.
LANenforcer security appliances offer comprehensive and continuous identity-based access control functionality on both a pre- and post-connect basis. The automatic, clientless endpoint scan performs a security audit before allowing network access, quarantining any clients that fail to satisfy established security policies. Policy enforcement is achieved through per-user stateful firewall rules that create a“Personal DMZ” for every authorized user and guest on the LAN. The system also logs the identity of all users and monitors all network activity to help comply with regulatory requirements, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
“An in-line appliance, like the LANenforcer, gives us far greater control over network access than an out-of-band solution ever could,” says David Parsley, manager of network services at Bridgewater College. “The LANenforcer met all of our needs, and is the only solution we could find capable of operating at a full 10 gigabit-per-second data rate.” Bridgewater College, a private, four-year liberal arts college, enrolls more than 1,500 students. Founded in 1880 and located in Virginia’s Central Shenandoah Valley, it was the state’s first private, coeducational senior college.
The LANenforcer security appliance is deployed between access switches and the network core, where it aggregates all traffic to provide individualized access control, along with microsecond threat detection and response. This approach enables the LANenforcer to be integrated easily into any existing network infrastructure, including those requiring 10 Gbps Ethernet line-rate performance. Nevis uniquely provides multiple highly integrated security services which all run in parallel at 10 Gbps, raising the bar against traditional security devices that struggle with performance and latency effectively creating a bottleneck overlay to the underlying network. Nevis is able to achieve this high level of performance without compromising security with its LANsecure Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) that offers six clusters of four CPU engines, each supporting four-way hardware multi-threading.
“Campus networks are perfect for us because of the way we combine complete mobility with tight security,”said vice president of sales Kevin O’Connor. “With our solution in place, networking staff at universities and colleges, such as Bridgewater, can leverage existing policies to automatically provide differentiated access based on the client identity from wherever the user connects to the network. We do this completely transparently at wirespeed while overlaying serious threat protection in a way that nobody else can today.”
About Nevis Networks
Nevis Networks is a market leader in secure switching and identity-based policy enforcement appliances. The company’s LANenforcer product family transparently enforces identity-based policies in real time within the network fabric, tightly controlling who can access a company’s network and what resources they are permitted to use. Cross-industry customers, ranging from financial services, healthcare, education and defense contractors deploy Nevis LANenforcers to protect sensitive network resources and assets, and significantly reduce the overall costs and time to resolve security breaches and conduct network audits. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with additional R&D centers in Pune, India and Beijing, China. https://nevisnetworks.com