Newbury WiFi Watchdog With Early Warning System Runs On Cisco APs

Seeking to boost visibility for its flagship WLAN security product, which uses a proprietary location-tracking technology to trace and identify threats, Newbury recently rolled out WiFi Watchdog/EWS (Early Warning System) and unveiled a partnership to enable its sensor software to run on Cisco Systems&' Aironet 1100 and 1220 access points.

Patrick Guerin, senior security analyst at Key Management Systems, a Colorado Springs-based security solution provider, says WiFi Watchdog operates smoothly in the Cisco environment. “When you configure the access point, it tells you it&'s operating as a Newbury device,” Guerin said. “The integration is tight—they&'re obviously sharing code and talking with each other.”

The partnership reflects Newbury&'s strategy of moving away from hardware sales and toward weaving its security and management applications into network infrastructure from major vendors, according to Chuck Conley, vice president of marketing at Boston-based Newbury Networks.

Newbury&'s EWS is designed for companies that don&'t have a WLAN but want to monitor their airspace for intruders. When a laptop is simultaneously connected to the corporate wired network and an unsecured access point outside of the corporate WLAN, it creates a ‘bridge&' that intruders can use to gain access to the wired network, Conley said. EWS guards against this type of threat by not allowing simultaneous wired and wireless connections.

“There are specific threats that organizations face even if they haven&'t deployed WLAN yet,” Conley said.

Companies with small-scale WLAN deployments can use EWS to identify and locate threats such as rogue access points and alert administrators. As they move to enterprisewide WLAN deployments, Newbury expects these companies to graduate to the full version of WiFi Watchdog.

Newbury&'s technology uses RF pattern matching to track devices to specific locations inside buildings. Many customers have offices in multitenant, multifloor buildings and need to build a perimeter around the corporate network to control connections between what&'s inside and what&'s outside, Conley said.

Available now, WiFi Watchdog/EWS has a list price of $9,995.