Westcon, Ingrian Team For Infrastructure Security

Ingrian's Active Application Security Solutions consist of the Secure Acceleration, Data Protection and Application Protection product lines, which ensure that all Web-based services are secure, scalable and simple to manage, said Anthony Daley, general manager of Westcon Inc., a Nortel Networks-focused division of Westcon Group. "When we look at the security market, there's a need to ensure secure transmissions in any network," Daley said. "We saw a need in the marketplace for secure transactions using SSL. We looked at Ingrian and liked their ability to have that security all the way through the transaction."

Ingrian has performed well in the financial services and medical markets, Daley said. "As continued requirements for HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 come into the enterprise, not just government, we saw this as a unique opportunity to take this product to market," he said.

The Ingrian solution encrypts data on the server, through the LAN, down to the SSL level, said Moses Schwartz, director of technical services at Westcon. The product is an add-on to the company's firewall, and most installations range from $25,000 to $150,000, Daley said. Westcon would not disclose margins for solution providers, but Daley said the company's offering "is a higher-margin product, being that it's a highly technical, niche product."

Ingrian's solution has features that differentiate it from others using SSL technology, said Vance Stone, director of engineering at Optivor Technologies, a solution provider in Jessup, Md. "You can encrypt data fields back to the database. That will be key for financial and health-care companies that need to encrypt client information such as social security numbers for HIPAA compliance or other regulatory issues," he said.

Optivor had identified several customers looking for SSL acceleration solutions even before Westcon brought in Ingrian, Stone said. "We never thought distribution partners would come to us with new technologies," he said. "It's usually the reverse."