ComBrio Enters Market with New Spin on VPN

The company, ComBrio, burst onto the security scene Monday and launched an agent-less managed services solution that enables users to connect to remote devices by establishing secure, point-to-point connections over the Internet without opening holes in the remote firewall.

Dubbed Virtual Service Infrastructure, the technology is now available to solution providers participating in the Southborough, Mass.-based company's fledgling channel program.

According to CEO David LeBeau, the ComBrio solution is designed to facilitate secure connections that improve service levels, increase security and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) across the board.

"The whole idea behind VSI was to provide a very secure environment to be able to have trusted and untrusted parties access the devices they need to access to keep services running without major expenditures," he said. "We're not trying to craft the art of securing a particular section of the network; what we're more interested in is providing the environment to support the infrastructure that provides those services today."

As LeBeau explained, the beauty of the ComBrio solution is its simplicity. The solution does not require any on-site configuration whatsoever, and can be used in any network. VSI deploys two solid-state appliances " the VSImanager and VSIgateway " and a rules-based policy manager, the VSIadministrator.

Together, the three components enable users to establish "Directed Circuits" dynamically and then purge them upon completion of a service session. This strategy implements what ComBrio officials call a point-to-point connection that's even more secure than a traditional VPN tunnel.

"Our solution takes all the risk out of tunneling," said Paul Campaniello, vice president of marketing. "When you open a tunnel, you're poking a hole through the firewall. With our solution, everything remains intact."

Campaniello said that because solution providers don't have to spend time configuring the VSI, the product is an "ideal" channel sale. He added that pricing for the VSI was not immediately available.