Aruba, Sygate Team On Security

Resellers now have at their disposal an Aruba Client Integrity module, which plugs into the ArubaOS to provide an automated way to inspect and police the security condition of unmanaged clients entering a network, said Jon Green, senior product manager at Aruba, Sunnyvale, Calif.

Leveraging a combination of Sygate's On-Demand Agent and Aruba's policy firewall, the Client Integrity module stops unmanaged clients, such as laptops introduced to a wireless network by visiting contractors or customers, from gaining direct, unregulated access to the network, said Seth Knox, director of product marketing at Sygate, Fremont, Calif. Instead, unmanaged clients requesting network access are first directed to a secure Aruba Web page where the Sygate On-Demand Agent is downloaded. The agent scans the visiting client to ensure that it meets predefined security conditions, he said.

"You can set policy to check for the latest services packs and patches or even for the presence of a personal firewall," Knox said.

Clients that meet requirements are allowed network access, but only to the degree set by pre-defined policy, Knox said. For example, the Client Integrity module can enforce the required use of a virtual desktop environment that can prohibit visiting clients from running certain applications or from permanently storing sensitive data, he said. Clients that don't meet requirements are blocked from the network and can be redirected to remediation Web sites.

The flexible way in which the Aruba Client Integrity module can be set to accommodate a range of different unmanaged clients gives solution providers the opportunity to wrap services around its deployment, said Chris Dale, president of Apex Technology Group, Cranston, R.I. "We tend to fine-tune and customize these things for our customers," he said.

Aruba's Client Integrity module starts at $500 per controller.