Network Associates announces Sniffer Network Protection Platform for enterprises, service providers

Network Associates has announced its Sniffer Network Protection Platform for enterprise and service provider customers around the globe. Designed to safeguard information technology infrastructures from malicious threats and performance issues, the Sniffer Network Protection Platform consists of network availability and performance management solutions from Sniffer Technologies that are focused on protecting the enterprise network, from the core to the edge.

Sniffer Technologies solutions sit at key touch points of the network. The Sniffer Network Protection Platform is designed for corporations, service-providers and governments that want to reduce network technology and security risk; optimise network performance and availability; improve business productivity; lower operational and capital expenses; and increase bottom line revenue.

"The evolving mix of business-enabling applications and services running on networks of large enterprises is sufficiently complex that no single product can effectively isolate and troubleshoot looming issues that threaten uptime," says Eric Hemmendinger, research director for security and privacy at Aberdeen Group. "The internal and external threats -- worms, viruses, Trojans, malicious applets and focused attacks -- are bound to penetrate the enterprise`s perimeter and even more sensitive assets. With the Sniffer Network Protection Platform, Network Associates is providing the pieces needed to monitor, identify, prioritise and resolve threats to the business-critical networks at the heart of today`s enterprises."

The Sniffer Network Protection Platform was developed to enable organisations to protect the performance, security and integrity of their businesses, handling the most complex network issues and malicious threats of today and tomorrow. As an evolving platform, the Sniffer Network Protection Platform consists of the following solutions, for new manageability and instrumentation for the network environment - with a pathway to intrusion prevention and application management solutions.

Real-time Expert Analysis, and blade-based architecture, are two features which provides the Sniffer Technologies s6040 appliance with powerful fault and performance management capabilities. It is a modular, high-performance appliance designed specifically for the core of Gigabit networks within enterprise organisations. The Sniffer Technologies s6040 appliance helps organisations significantly improve performance, productivity and cost-effectiveness across their network infrastructure by providing Gigabit Ethernet speed data acquisition and analysis.

With support for asymmetric routing and up to four full-duplex media modules, the Sniffer Technologies s6040 is designed to enable network managers to dramatically reduce the time to resolution of some of today`s most complex security and network performance issues.

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As the analysis software operating on Sniffer Technologies appliances, the new Sniffer Distributed 4.3 product is a fault and network performance management solution that can be deployed across the entire network. New with Sniffer Distributed 4.3 is the ability to deploy RMON+ capabilities in a cost-effective manner at remote sites or small branch offices where expert analysis is not required. This new level of price performance means that customers can now instrument their networks from the core where mission-critical applications operate, to the very edge where end-users interact with customers - providing complete visibility on security and performance issues that span the network.

To augment the Sniffer Network Protection Platform, Network Associates offers the nPO solution. With new enhancements to its key components -- nPO Manager 2.0 and nPO Visualizer 2.1 - the nPO solution enables network, security and application professionals to strategically and effectively manage, secure and plan the growth of their global networks and applications.

* nPO Manager 2.0 provides enhanced centralised management, administration, and security, enabling IT administrators to easily manage their Sniffer Technologies instrumentation from a single point, anywhere in the world. The nPO Manager from Sniffer Technologies now incorporates multi-trace analysis, which enables network managers to rapidly sort through traffic data from multiple network segments to quickly drill down to route cause analysis. When a service issue spans multiple network segments, nPO Manager can reduce the time-to-fault identification from days to minutes. New features of this release also include an easy-to-use interface, enhanced alarm management to lower resolution time and new analysis capabilities to help ensure the availability and performance of customers` business-critical applications.

* nPO Visualizer 2.1 lets IT managers and administrators produce expanded reports on network performance issues, bandwidth utilisation, global statistics, top alarms, and usage trends to designated users and executives worldwide. With added user, preference and reporting controls administrators can further understand their network activity and intelligently determine cost-allocation and expense reduction.

"The announcement demonstrates Network Associates` commitment to its customers by developing and delivering solutions that protect their networks," says Christopher Bray, Network Associates regional director for sub-Saharan Africa. "With the Sniffer Network Protection Platform, organisations now have a strategic platform of products that enables them to protect their IT investments across key touch points of the network - to identify cyber attacks and significantly reduce costly network availability issues that can impact their bottom line revenue."

For additional information on the Sniffer Network Protection Platform, please contact Network Associates at (011) 700 8200.