Altech Card Solutions launches managed WiFi intrusion prevention offering powered by AirTight WIPS

Issued by SecureData
Johannesburg, 24 Jan 2013

Altech Card Solutions, wholly owned subsidiary of JSE-listed Altech (Allied Technologies), today announced the launch of an additional managed security solution service. To implement this service, Altech is using the cloud-managed version of AirTight WIPS, which offers protection against WiFi threats and complements its existing managed security services offering.

"Altech Card Solutions is the premier managed services provider in South Africa and always looks for technologies to keep us at the forefront of innovation to protect our clients. WiFi protection has been a common topic and concern among all of our enterprise customers," said Peter Krahtz, Sales Manager at Altech Card Solutions. "We investigated a number of technologies when we decided to offer a managed WiFi intrusion prevention system and found that AirTight provided the best protection as well as the easiest management platform from which to launch a WIPS managed service."

"We were extremely proud when Altech Card Solutions approached us for guidance around their managed WiFi IPS offering," said Wayne Olsen, Chief Technology Officer at SecureData, the sole distributor for AirTight Networks in sub-Saharan Africa. "Many organisations fail to realise just how vulnerable they are to wireless attacks. The common misconception among clients is that they have a secured WiFi infrastructure with access control lists, WPA and WPA2 encryption. We are not worried about the access points you know about; it's more the unauthorised or 'rogue' access points that appear on a network. Every single smartphone and tablet user has the potential to set up unsecured access points within an organisation's environment, allowing anyone within range of that access point to connect, bypassing the millions of rands spent securing the wired network. AirTight now gives us the ability to deny rogue APs access to the network and, along with the managed service from Altech, this can be done on the fly without end-user intervention."

Key features

* Subscription-based WiFi access, WIPS, and compliance modules
* Choose from a multi-tenant public cloud or a dedicated private cloud
* Full opex and bundled capex pricing options
* Plug-and-play deployment; zero touch provisioning
* Centralised, single pane of glass view
* Hierarchical location-based management

Services

The following three modules comprise AirTight Cloud Services suite.

WiFi access: Branded as AirTight Wi-Fi, this service simplifies deployment and centralised management of distributed WiFi networks, and significantly reduces the cost as compared to traditional enterprise WiFi solutions. The service is ideal for enterprises that want to roll out WiFi access at hundreds or thousands of geographically distributed sites.

Wireless security: Branded as AirTight WIPS, this service offers the top-rated wireless intrusion prevention system (WIPS) for 24/7 automated monitoring and mitigation of wireless vulnerabilities and threats such as rogue APs, soft rogue APs, ad-hoc connections, client misassociations, Honeypot/Evil Twin, wi-phishing, WiFi DoS attacks and BYOD risks.

Regulatory compliance: This service enables organisations across different industries to meet wireless security requirements within the respective regulatory compliance standards, such as PCI DSS, HIPAA, DoDi 8420.01, SOX, GLBA and MITS. Predefined compliance analysis and reporting simplifies compliance audits. Administrators can choose to have a compliance report periodically delivered to their inboxes.

Architecture

Plug-and-play deployment: Preconfigured AirTight AP/Sensor devices automatically connect and synchronise with the AirTight cloud, enabling true plug-and-play deployment at remote locations in minutes without the need for intricate configuration or local IT support.

Centralised management: Administrators can securely (via https) access the management console from their Web browsers. The HTML5 user interface provides complete visibility and control of the entire deployment. The user-customisable dashboards and intuitive workflow eliminate the need for extensive trainings and certifications to use the product. AirTight's patented hierarchical location-based management framework makes the solution ideal for distributed enterprises spanning hundreds or thousands of geographically distributed sites. Everything from defining and pushing policies, role-based administration, network statistics, dashboards and device listing to receiving alerts and report generation and scheduling can be handled in the context of a particular site, a group of sites, or the entire deployment from a single console.

Secure data centre: The cloud services are provisioned from SAS-70 certified secure data centres architected for high availability. Data centre access is restricted through a triple-layer authentication. Customers can choose between a public and private cloud deployment. Multi-tenant architecture enables complete data segregation and privacy for individual customers on the AirTight public cloud.

Altech Card Services

ACS e-Security is a highly specialised enterprise security solutions and service provider within Altech Card Solutions, a division that provides specialised information security solutions and services to address the volatile nature of identity and information security threats. Its expertise enables customers to not only communicate and transact online with confidence, but also to address and monitor their threat and fraud management needs. Forming trusted partnerships with customers is vital to ensure ACS surpasses expectations.

ACS is a wholly owned subsidiary of JSE-listed Altech (Allied Technologies), a leading South African multibillion-rand high-technology group that operates in the telecommunications, multimedia and information technology (TMT) environments, with a strong focus on convergence - customers who live in a world of multiple devices, a variety of networks and limitless scalable content are all now able to unite through invisible connectivity.

Altech Card Solutions e-Security is one of four pillars within ACS and operates in the following major areas:

* IT infrastructure security
* Business applications security
* Managed security services
* IT security professional services

SecureData

SecureData is a value-added distributor of information risk management and network solutions for the African sub-continent and Indian Ocean islands. A cross-section of the available solutions from SecureData illustrates wide coverage of the following information security and risk management domains: business continuity, security appliances and devices, hardware authentication, identity and access management, security and vulnerability management, secure content management, threat management and security services.

SecureData's information security and risk management solutions include best-of-breed network, endpoints, messaging and Web. In addition, as a value-add to vendor, channel and customer, SecureData also provides a full complement of support, pre-sales and professional services around the solutions positioned in each discrete security vertical.

AirTight Networks

AirTight Networks is a global provider of secure WiFi solutions that combine its patented and industry-leading wireless intrusion prevention system (WIPS) technology with the next-generation, cloud-managed, controller-less WiFi architecture. This unified approach allows enterprises for the first time to benefit from WiFi access while concurrently protecting their networks 24/7 from wireless threats at no additional cost. AirTight's customers include global enterprises across virtually all industries and range from those who overlay AirTight WIPS on top of other WLAN solutions, to those who leverage the AirTight Cloud Services to roll out and manage AirTight Wi-Fi, WIPS, and regulatory compliance (eg, PCI) across tens of thousands of locations from a single console. AirTight owns the seminal patents for wireless intrusion prevention technology with 29 US and international patents granted, and more than 20 additional patents pending. For more information, please visit: www.airtightnetworks.com.

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