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Two companies boost wireless security
New protection offered at the RSA show.
By John Cox, Network World | Network World US
Published: 17:49 GMT, 08 February 07
Two vendors this week plan to release mobile security products for the enterprise. Network Chemistry is updating its radio frequency scanning software and start-up Yoggie Security Systems is shipping a gateway device for laptops.
The two products will be launched at the annual RSA Conference in San Francisco, which will include 14 sessions and tutorials focused on wireless and mobile security.
Network Chemistry has made changes in a new release of RFprotect Scanner, a rackmounted appliance with software, which detects devices such as access points and wireless-equipped laptops that attach to the network. The product, through a downloaded agent, then creates a 'fingerprint' of each device's radio signature, then compares this with Network Chemistry's database of such fingerprints to identify the wireless device, and determine if it represents a threat (an earlier version is reviewed here).
The new scanner release can identify consumer-grade access points, from vendors such as Linksys and NetGear, even though most have a firewall on their WAN port, blocking most identification techniques. Scanner now launches its exploring agent program, called RogueScanner, to access the device via its LAN connection. Also new is the ability to detect and identify Ethernet-connected laptops that also have their wireless adapter active: with the right software, such devices can be used by wireless attackers as a bridge into the wired network.
The fingerprint database has been expanded: it now can match a scan with over 800 different access points, and more than 10,000 other network device types. Altogether, over one million devices have been cataloged.
Also new is a graphical incident management system, a workflow program for managers that shows what steps have been taken by whom, after a suspicious device has been identified. Finally, the company has revamped the reporting features, creating a centralized snapshot of incident and trend reports, and adding an automatic compliance report for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, part of which calls for the ability to identify and stop unauthorized access attempts, including those over wireless links.
Yoggie is now shipping its Gatekeeper Pro, a USB-attached device about the size of a fat harmonica that runs a stack of high-powered security programs, including a firewall and VPN client. It sits between the laptop and whatever Internet connection is available, wired or wireless.
Administrators use the Yoggie Management Server to set up and change security policies for users, and the Gatekeeper enforces them.
Gatekeeper Pro is now available, adding e-mail security, Web filtering, a more powerful CPU, and double the memory (128 Mbyte) of the Gatekeeper Basic model.
The company also announced that it is adding SurfControl's URL classification and filtering client to the Gatekeeper Pro software stack. The new software works with SurfControl's continually updated Web filtering database of more than 20 million URLs, and blocks a range of malware.
The company recently incorporated a customised version of Mailshell's software program for blocking spam and phishing attacks.
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