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PacketMotion Fortifies Internal Network Security With PacketSentry Solution

Posted on: Monday, 23 January 2006, 12:00 CST

PacketMotion, the leading authority on Identity Intelligence(TM) solutions for the enterprise, today announced PacketSentry, the first internal network security solution to provide enterprises with a centralized, top-to-bottom view tracking who's doing what with data and applications on the network. PacketSentry's unique identity-centric view combines real-time analysis with business understanding, enabling companies to enforce business and security policies while protecting their corporate assets, intellectual property, and operations. By providing greater visibility into the "who" and "what" of network activity, PacketSentry supports a wide range of internal security functions including investigative forensics and compliance auditing.

"Businesses are faced with increasing policy and regulatory mandates to protect their assets," said Andrew Jaquith, SeniorAnalyst, Security Solutions and Services, Yankee Group. "Deploying an internal security solution requires IT organizations to merge together user identities, network traffic, accessed resources and security policies in order to protect their assets. PacketMotion is amongst the first to provide a centralized internal security solution. As a result, businesses gain greater visibility into internal network activity."

PacketSentry's Identity Intelligence solution is a one-stop shop, providing security professionals with the tools needed to extract, store and report on pertinent information for extended periods of time. Instead of managing information based upon days or weeks, PacketSentry was designed from the ground up to store years of data in normal operations. This makes it invaluable for supporting quarterly and annual audits, as well as answering forensics questions that may not be asked until long after the original incident occurred.

"PacketSentry provides us with the insurance we need to protect our intellectual property," said Roger Blakely, vice president of IT and Information Security at Sonic Solutions. "PacketSentry's centralized view allows us to quickly monitor and manage all internal network usage and illicit activity, and apply forensic investigation if required within minutes."

PacketSentry delivers results that boost internal security with no impact on business operations. The solution leverages existing corporate identity systems and secures the enterprise using established policies. At the heart of the PacketSentry solution is the Virtual Proxy Engine(TM), which analyzes and interprets complete conversations while extracting and storing only the critical relevant data. PacketSentry then correlates all the collected data so that information is presented at the user and application level, not the packet or port level. This approach allows PacketSentry to store information much longer than alternative products -- multiple years rather than weeks -- using far less storage capacity and simultaneously makes that information much easier to review and report on by eliminating the clutter and extraneous data.

"Protecting intellectual property is critical in today's information economy, and internal network security is the front line of defense. In addition, new regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPPA move beyond corporate policy and mandate enterprise enforcement," said Ken Fehrnstrom, chief executive officer, PacketMotion. "PacketSentry provides the tools to enforce security plans that enable companies to achieve their security objectives and compliance requirements with minimal effort and with reasonable budgets."

By binding identity information to the details of network activity in real-time, the PacketSentry solution delivers a top-to-bottom business-oriented picture of the enterprise that strengthens internal security in multiple critical areas:

-- Investigative Forensics -- Companies can now visualize user and organization activity to uncover anomalous traffic, investigate breaches and isolate activities of a specific user or group with a few mouse clicks. With PacketSentry, investigators can quickly see what applications a user has been running, what servers have been accessed, and exactly what files have been opened, not just how many megabytes of network traffic two IP addresses have exchanged.

-- Compliance Auditing -- By reporting cross-organizational information access, PacketSentry allows companies to audit activity against compliance requirements while eliminating the painstaking process of logging and collecting network usage data on a per server or application basis.

-- Network Usage Reporting by User, Group, Application or Host -- Enterprises now gain an accurate view by user, group, application or host rather than just IP addresses and port numbers.

-- Illicit Activity Monitoring -- Companies obtain a better view of information accessed and transmitted via peer-to-peer or instant messenger traffic so they can make more informed management decisions to uphold business policies.

The PacketSentry solution consists of the PacketSentry Probe 1000 and the PacketSentry Manager. The core of the PacketSentry solution is the Probe 1000, which utilizes the company's proprietary Virtual Proxy Engine to analyze and interpret all network conversations and distills out of each flow only the salient information needed about the transaction. The PacketSentry Manager then correlates information from all the Probes to provide a unified database of network information for easy reporting and management. While other solutions might require gigabytes of storage per hour, PacketMotion's optimized approach scales based on the number of Probes and network traffic levels for each Probe and can generally be measured in gigabytes per month. Installation of PacketSentry devices does not require modifications to the network infrastructure or directory configuration, and there are no server or desktop agents to install and manage.

Availability

The PacketSentry solution will be generally available in January 2006. Typical installations start at $50,000 depending on network size.

About PacketMotion

PacketMotion is the leading authority on secure identity intelligence solutions for the enterprise. The company's PacketSentry(TM) solution enables IT professionals to transparently view who is doing what with the information on their networks in real time. Its Virtual Proxy Engine(TM) analyzes each network conversation, distilling out only the critical meta data. This makes it practical for businesses to track long-term network usage, with retention policies based on business needs not budgetary or storage constraints. As a result, businesses can guarantee the safety of their intellectual property, identify and control internal security threats to ensure internal and external compliance without burdening their network operations. For more information go to www.packetmotion.com.

Source: Business Wire

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