DNS: Xceedium Augments GateKeeper Appliance

By Jayashree Adkoli, TMCnet Contributor

Xceedium, Inc., a provider of Zero Trust Access Control solutions, has augmented its GateKeeper appliance by integrating it with remote access security solutions from Cisco Systems, F5 Networks (News - Alert) and Juniper Networks.

The integration of remote access solutions in to the GateKeeper appliance will not only extend the appliance’s enterprise capabilities but will also facilitate customers of Xceedium to rapidly deploy it to protect large enterprise networks and cloud computing environments, as well as take advantage of the capabilities of SSL VPN products to create more powerful privileged access solutions.

According to Xceedium, the GateKeeper is a hardened appliance that allows companies to remotely manage the activities of privileged users from a central point to anywhere in the heterogeneous IT infrastructure, without the modification of legacy systems and with minimal implementation.

Precisely, the GateKeeper appliance helps organizations to enforce access control policies. It is generally used by large and mid-sized enterprises, federal government agencies, as well as closely regulated financial services, healthcare and utilities industries, in order to meet their stringent security and compliance needs.

Creating a detailed, centralized and actionable audit trails, the GateKeeper appliance facilitates organizations to effectively manage risk and maintain compliance with the security requirements of PCI, FISMA, NIST-800.53, FIPS, HIPAA, NERC (News - Alert) and other regulations.

Precisely, this FIPS 140-2 Level 2 and EAL2, EAL3 certified solution facilitates organizations to control access to their network based on who the user is, and also contains the user to explicit resources, thereby eliminating the risk of allowing un-trusted third parties and privileged users on their networks.

Often, customers utilize the Xceedium GateKeeper to control, contain and audit the activity of privileged users who are remotely connecting to an enterprise network through an SSL VPN, stated a press release.

"Xceedium designed the GateKeeper to easily integrate into the largest enterprise networks," said Glenn Hazard, CEO of Xceedium, in a statement. "Our new release significantly expands our enterprise product ecosystem by adding support for the leading remote access solutions from Cisco, F5 and Juniper.”

The latest enhancements to the GateKeeper will enable it to transparently pick up users’ credentials and use them for all subsequent privileged access requests, once a user has authenticated to the corporate VPN.

Hazard added, “Our customers can now use the GateKeeper to extend the security of their existing SSL VPN infrastructure to seamlessly control and audit privileged access of third party vendors and remote administrators."

According to the release, the latest release of GateKeeper features tight integration with the dominant remote access security solutions namely Cisco (News - Alert) ASA 5500 Series Adaptive Security Appliances, F5 FirePass SSL VPN and Juniper SA Series SSL VPN Appliances.

In November 2010, Xceedium announced that Government Security News named it the "Best Network Security" product in its 2010 Homeland Security Awards.

To find out more about Cisco, visit the company at ITEXPO East 2011. To be held Feb. 2-4 in Miami, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Carlos Torales of Cisco is speaking during “Vendor Panel: Responding to Today’s and Tomorrow’s Enterprise Requirements” and “The Next Generation of Voice over WLAN.” Don’t wait. Register now.

(source: http://dns.tmcnet.com/topics/internet-security/articles/140766-dns-xceedium-augments-gatekeeper-appliance.htm)