NetScreen, Trend Micro to deliver tighter integration of network security solutions

Secure Data, a member of the JSE-listed ERP.com Group, and the southern African distributor for Trend security software, today announced that the latter and NetScreen Technologies have significantly expanded their alliance to deliver on a shared vision of integrating NetScreen's network security and Trend Micro's anti-virus and content security capabilities.

The companies have signed a definitive agreement to develop, market and sell a new best-of-breed integrated security gateway for remote sites that combines anti-virus, firewall, virtual private network (VPN) and intrusion prevention in a single platform. The integrated security gateway will be based on the new NetScreen-5GT platform.

NetScreen and Trend Micro also plan to collaborate on additional integrated security gateways that include the combination of features and management capabilities to meet customers' increasing security requirements throughout their networks.

The companies also intend to provide customers with end-to-end security solutions that can increase network security and reduce the operating costs associated with security deployments enterprise-wide. Additionally, the agreement supports Trend Micro's Enterprise Protection Strategy and NetScreen's goal to provide innovative, best-of-breed network security solutions for proactive network, application and anti-virus attack management coupled with centralised policy management.

This expanded alliance builds upon the two companies' history of collaboration to manage the outbreak lifecycle with proactive policy management, as well as increased overall performance through platform integration.

"Gartner believes enterprises are moving toward an integrated network security platform approach, and that winning platforms will preserve customers' requirement for best-of-breed technologies," commented Richard Stiennon, research director at Gartner. "Tighter integration and common management across security solutions will provide customers improved attack blocking and lowering total cost of ownership."

"This agreement strengthens NetScreen's established relationship with Trend Micro and exemplifies our support of Trend Micro's Enterprise Protection Strategy," added Robert Thomas, president and CEO of NetScreen. "NetScreen and Trend Micro are driving tighter integration of what had been considered separate fields of network security and anti-virus and content security."

"The performance, security and total cost of ownership advantages of NetScreen's systems are a strong complement to Trend Micro's award-winning anti-virus and content security technology," concluded Steve Chang, president and CEO of Trend Micro. "This alliance extends Trend Micro's gateway leadership to the distributed enterprise, while strengthening NetScreen's expertise in protecting the extended enterprise."

The first product resulting from the collaboration between the two companies will be a new integrated gateway appliance jointly delivered by NetScreen and Trend Micro and designed to help enterprise customers secure remote sites, branch offices and telecommuters. Also, the resulting solution can enable carriers and managed security service providers to offer additional services for enterprise customers of all sizes, without having to add more equipment at the customer's site. The integrated gateway appliance will be based on the new NetScreen-5GT platform, which offers many resiliency features, high performance firewall and VPN throughput, and extra memory and CPU capacity for future security functions, including anti-virus and intrusion prevention.

Customers can either purchase the NetScreen-5GT as an integrated security gateway or upgrade the device with Trend Micro's anti-virus technology by purchasing a simple software upgrade expected to be available in the second half of 2003. A Trend Micro-branded version of the NetScreen-5GT with anti-virus technology also is expected to be available in the same timeframe.

NetScreen and Trend Micro's currently planned activities, pairing anti-virus with firewall, VPN, and intrusion detection and prevention functionality, are designed to address customers' security needs at remote and central sites as well as at the desktop, server and management levels to provide solutions that facilitate an end-to-end security infrastructure.

Additional development activities planned by the two companies to drive the deployment of their respective technologies throughout enterprise environments may include:

* Extending the integration of Trend Micro's anti-virus technology into additional NetScreen platforms.

* Extending NetScreen's support for Trend Micro's Enterprise Protection Strategy, which allows customers to proactively respond to network threats via centralised policy management and interaction between security devices, servers and other computing and networking platforms.

* Collaborating to extend support for Trend Micro's Content Scanning Protocol (CSP) across additional NetScreen and Trend Micro products; such integration will facilitate redirection of relevant traffic by NetScreen devices to the appropriate Trend Micro device for content scanning.

* Exploring acceleration of anti-virus scanning performance.

For further information, please contact Dean Brazier at telephone (011) 258 7800; fax (011) 258 7888; e-mail deanb@sd.co.za