Access Beefs Up Surveillance Lineup

The Westminster, Colo.-based distributor will carry Entrust&'s IdentityGuard, an authentication product, and its boundary messaging offering, which includes the Entelligence Compliance Server.

Entrust fills a gap in authentication solutions that Access Distribution has had since it mutually ended its relationship with RSA Security about a year and a half ago, said Grant Hunter, vice president of the Enterprise Solutions Group at Access Distribution.

Entrust&'s IdentityGuard uses a grid of characters and numbers to answer a random challenge. The authentication is generated when data or applications are accessed through remote-access gateways, Windows log-on and Web-based applications, Entrust said.

Its messaging system provides realtime content scanning analysis and transparent enforcement for all outbound e-mails, including attachments. The server can encrypt e-mail that is transparent to the sender, but then is delivered in a normal manner to the recipient, the Dallas-based company said.

Entrust currently sells directly to solution providers and end users. Each member of Entrust&'s inside sales force is responsible for about 70 Fortune 1000 accounts—too many for the vendor to handle directly, Hunter said.

“There is a huge opportunity for enterprise VARs to get into those accounts. Some key accounts [Entrust] will continue to manage themselves, but they are turning their field people into territory salespeople that will handle both direct and channel accounts to maximize the delivery,” Hunter said. “They don&'t have a huge reseller channel. They want us to build their channel. It&'s a similar story to Vignette [which tapped Access Distribution as its first distributor last February].”

Entrust has been a good vendor partner for Horizon Systems for about a year, said Rick Jeffrey, principal consultant at the Columbus, Ohio-based solution provider. “But like a lot of companies, they want more market share. They can have only so many foot soldiers [internally]. I&'m not surprised that they would turn to a distributor,” he said.

Details of the distribution relationship, including specific sales or technical support, have not been finalized, Hunter said. “[Entrust offers] an innovative leading technology that is a major cost break from RSA. They are good solutions in compliance, e-mail content filtering and secure messaging environment,” he said.