Juniper Deepens Security

Through the effort, dubbed the Juniper Endpoint Defense Initiative (JEDI), Juniper appliances will offer end-point security that leverages installed end-point agents and enables integrated provisioning, auditing, policy definition and central management through the SSL VPN tool.

"This is an architecture, a functionality and a forward-looking plan to establish the integrity of end points no matter where they're connecting from," said Johnnie Konstantas, senior product manager at the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company.

JEDI manifests itself in three distinct forms--security functionality native to the NetScreen Secure Access SSL VPN and two APIs, one on the client side and one on the server side, Konstantas said. These APIs work together to quarantine and automatically upgrade end points that attempt to use a VPN to gain access to a network but do not comply with that network's security policies.

JEDI will also facilitate integration with other vendors' end-point security technologies including InfoExpress, McAfee, Microsoft, Sygate, Trend Micro and Whole Security. These vendors, along with Juniper, last year founded the Trusted Computing Group to develop open standards for hardware-enabled security.

Resellers say that initiatives such as JEDI-secure customer end points will most likely translate into additional profits.

"It is no longer a feasible security strategy for organizations to simply protect their network perimeter," said Dan Wilson, vice president of vendor relations at Accuvant, Denver. "As a security solution provider, it is always exciting to offer solutions that expand and enable business capabilities rather than simply address potential threats."

JEDI will be available at no cost for proprietary Jupiter software and hardware. Resellers using third-party applications and hardware will incur an incremental cost depending on the product or application.