re Application Access gateway most secure in industry

SOMERSET, N.J. (April 19, 2011) – AEP Networks, the provider of trusted security, has strengthened the security on its Secure Application Access gateway in response to concerns about the highly sensitive data being held by cloud service providers and in company data centres. With the integration of its Key Security and Management Hardware Security Module (HSM) with the Secure Application Access gateway, AEP Networks has significantly enhanced the security and integrity of the cryptographic key system used to protect application access, bringing to market the most secure application access gateway.

As employees demand access to corporate applications from corporate and personal devices, anywhere, organisations need assurance that they can provide seamless, secure access at all times. AEP Networks’ Key Storage and Security HSM use the highest quality random number generator to produce highly secure cryptographic keys. Once generated, the keys are stored in tamper-reactive hardware which is validated to US Government NIST FIPS-140-2 level 4. In the event of the HSM being subject to power, temperature, chemical or physical attack, it actively destroys the private and secret cryptographic keys to ensure that they are not abused. 

AEP Networks’ Secure Application Access gateway enables organisations to provide their employees with complete freedom to use a variety of devices from corporate PCs to their own iPad or Android tablets to access their centrally hosted Cloud applications, whilst maintaining a high degree of security. Using endpoint fingerprinting technology, each device and employee can be checked for full compliance with company security software policy during connection requests, meaning organisations no longer need to pre-approve tens of thousands of devices.  Any device or employee falling outside of the organisation’s security policy will only have limited access to corporate resources. Once a session is terminated by a user logging out or as a result of a timed out session, all cache data is deleted so no sensitive information remains on public computers. Centralised control of data also means that data will not be lost if devices are lost or stolen.

“Sensitive and commercial data is increasingly under attack, whether for financial gain or corporate espionage, and the need to provide the highest level of security is absolutely paramount. As users access critical applications and confidential sensitive data from work, home or on the move, security officers need to be one hundred percent confident that they are providing secure access,” said Mark Darvill, director at AEP Networks. “The integration of our Key Storage and Security HSM with the Secure Application Access gateway delivers Assurance that brings military levels of security to the enterprise. It gives security officers a greater degree of Assurance as they are generating, storing and managing the cryptographic keys in a secure, hardware-based device whilst providing legitimate users with the flexibility and access they need.”

The Assurance based Secure Application Access gateway is available in three different licensing models to best suit the different business needs of enterprises, cloud based service providers and public cloud providers:

CloudProtect Assurance - Security as a Service (SECaaS) subscription model with no upfront CAPEX investment

LANProtect Assurance – designed for organisations who have a fixed number of named users requiring application access

ServiceProtect Assurance – for organisations that do not know ahead of time when they will experience peak usage or how big that peak will be

Key features of the Secure Application Access gateway:

Access Level Management: Businesses can limit privileges for users who do not pass client integrity checks to allow business continuity with a reduced level of access

Reporting: Enterprises can download user activity reports for auditing, compliance, and usage measurement reporting

Printing: Organisations can offer universal printing without incurring an administrative headache

Device independent: Employees can use their own devices to access the applications hosted in the virtualised or cloud-based environment

The Secure Application Access gateway supports a fully heterogeneous environment allowing users to access their critical applications from the iPad or Android regardless of whether they are running on a Citrix, VMware, Microsoft Terminal Services, VDI, Unix or web platform. The Key Security and Management platform offers Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 4 protection to provide the highest level of security for cryptographic keys.  AEP will be further enhancing its HSM in September 2011 by adding support for 224 bits, 256 bits, 382 bits and 512 bits Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) p curves.