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Department of Homeland Security Selects 3Com and Adventium Labs to Secure Critical Infrastructure; Adventium Labs Selected for Service and Development, 3Com Selected for Security Products

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 09:00 CDT

Adventium Labs and 3Com Corporation were jointly selected by the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), the research and development arm of the Department of Homeland Security, to provide advanced cyber security technology to protect critical operations in water treatment, electrical power, petrochemical refining, and other areas of the Nation's critical infrastructures.

The two-year project will enlist Adventium Labs to add Virtual Private Groups (VPGs) to the 3Com(R) Embedded Firewall (EFW). The 3Com EFW product is a tamper resistant, centrally managed distributed firewall that is used to protect everything from ship board computer networks for the US Navy to financial transactions on Wall Street. Adding VPGs will enable secure groups to operate within an organization and across enterprise boundaries, reduce the effects of malicious or careless insiders, and do so without degrading performance.

Dr. Douglas Maughan, HSARPA Cyber Security Program Manager, stated:

"Research and development to enhance existing commercial products, like this improvement of the Embedded Firewall software, directly contributes to HSARPA's goal of rapidly deploying solutions that enable critical operations to continue through accidents and malicious events."

Dr. Richard O'Brien, the project's principal investigator at Adventium Labs, explains: "In the past, critical operations were protected with an 'air-gap' that physically separated critical networks from the other business networks and the Internet. As networked business applications become more prevalent, this air-gap has been disappearing. The VPG enhancements will enable EFW to enforce the separation of critical operations from the enterprise networks without losing the efficiency gains made by modern business applications."

Adventium is working closely with 3Com Corporation to see the potential benefits of VPGs in a commercial EFW product. "3Com supports this research initiative. We are honored that our technology was chosen by HSARPA, and looking forward to advancing the government's interest in protecting its critical infrastructure," says Rahul Jain, EFW Product Manager at 3Com.

About Adventium Labs

Adventium Labs is a non-profit research and development lab focused on developing advanced software applications for complex systems, with a particular emphasis on cyber security, automated reasoning, human-system interaction and supporting architectures. Adventium Labs is dedicated to performing and publishing scientific research, and to intellectual property creation, maturation and commercialization. Its goal is to advance the state of the art, provide effective solutions to important problems and foster high-tech job creation. For more information, visit www.adventiumlabs.org.

About HSARPA

The Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) within the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for jump starting and facilitating research and development efforts to help address critical needs on the homeland defense scientific front--quickly moving technologies from development into testing and deployment. HSARPA accomplishes this mission by partnering with industry, universities and non-profits, and other government agencies to find, develop, demonstrate and transfer innovative ideas.

About 3Com Corporation

3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS) is a leading provider of secure, converged voice and data networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes. 3Com offers a broad line of innovative products backed by world class sales, service and support, which excel at delivering business value for its customers. Through its TippingPoint division, 3Com is the leading provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems that deliver in-depth application protection, infrastructure protection, and performance protection for corporate enterprises, government agencies, service providers and academic institutions. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox.

Copyright (C) 2005 3Com Corporation. 3Com and the 3Com logo are registered trademarks and TippingPoint is a trademark of 3Com Corporation or one of its subsidiaries. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective holders.

Source: Business Wire

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