F5 Networks' BIG-IP Edge Gateway Achieves ICSA Labs SSL VPN Certification

By Anil Sharma, TMCnet Contributor

F5 Networks, Inc., a major player in application delivery networking, has announced that its BIG-IP Edge Gateway (News - Alert) remote access solution has achieved Secure Sockets Layer-Transport Layer Security (SSL-TLS) Virtual Private Networking (VPN) Certification version 3.0 from ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business.

Officials with F5 Networks (News - Alert) said that this certification is reserved for products that meet ICSA Labs’ demanding security standards for products implementing SSL-TLS for data confidentiality, authentication, and integrity assurance for internetwork transactions.

Company officials said that it certifies that BIG-IP Edge Gateway operates as expected and meets the criteria established by ICSA Labs to guard against unauthorized access to corporate resources through a hijacked VPN session.

According to company officials, the accomplishment marks the latest of F5’s ongoing efforts with ICSA Labs, including Web Application Firewall version 2.0.1 certification for the BIG-IP Application Security (News - Alert) Manager solution and SSL-TLS certification for the FirePass SSL VPN solution.

The ICSA Labs SSL-TLS VPN Certification program is an independent and comprehensive process that rigorously tests, assesses, and validates enterprise SSL-TLS VPNs in a simulated, real-world environment.

Testing criteria are publicly posted for review and comment by industry groups, industry experts, and end-users, including a consortium of SSL-TLS VPN product vendors.

“F5 Networks continues to demonstrate its commitment to product quality through ongoing certification efforts,” said Guy Snyder, program manager at ICSA Labs, in a statement.

Snyder said that ICSA Labs employs a comprehensive array of criteria, methodologies, and ISO documentation processes to verify that evaluated solutions perform to the standards that the market—and users—depend on.

“BIG-IP Edge Gateway enables IT administrators to consolidate access and optimization capabilities into a unified, easy-to-manage solution,” said Mark Vondemkamp, director of product management for Security at F5.

Vondemkamp said that today’s organizations are examining new access models to efficiently scale their infrastructures to address the growing number of mobile workers.

BIG-IP Edge Gateway provides seamless, streamlined access to corporate applications and data for an impressive breadth of devices and usage scenarios—and at substantially less cost than the number of disparate point products that would otherwise be required to achieve similar performance.

(source: http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com/topics/security/articles/93467-f5-networks-big-ip-edge-gateway-achieves-icsa.htm)