Defence-grade firewall imperative to Education customer base of leading business ISP

    1500 NETASQ U70 devices to be deployed by 2013

London, 18th September 2012: Network and security pioneer and innovator NETASQ has signed a contract with Exa Networks, Internet Services Provider to the Education and Business community, to deploy 1500 of its NETASQ U70 devices across its network during 2013.  Already having deployed over 30 devices, the company chose NETASQ based on its defence grade technology, and high levels of functionality.

Crucial to its success is Exa’s ability to provide its customers with a security infrastructure that supports its needs, and whilst initially happy with the Cisco products it had installed, Exa realised there was an opportunity to offer more to its customers in terms of functionality and configurability, and sought a replacement. NETASQ’s high level of functionality, and the fact that it bases its products on the ICAP protocol, which allows for open standard communication between security devices to filter content, meant it was a perfect fit.

Mark Cowgill, Director and Founder at Exa Networks said, “We needed to be sure, given our customers are within education specifically, that any new solution implemented could be trusted and managed easily and efficiently.  We didn’t hesitate in suggesting NETASQ’s equipment as a solution to our customers.”

He continued, “Our customers are delighted with the implementation of the NETASQ equipment – it far exceeded ours and their expectation.  Ultimately, the U70 gives a cost effective, high quality solution that offers far better value in terms of product and service than other offerings on the market.  Installing this equipment means we’re able to offer a reliable solution that we hope to standardise across our business.”

The core of the NETASQ Firewall U Series centres on its proprietary system that embeds firewall features and real-time intrusion prevention. The NETASQ engine analyses network protocols in order to detect and block threats, and thanks to numerous behavioural analyses and different targeted signature databases (depending on the context), it delivers a very high level of security by dramatically reducing the risk of false alarms.

As educational establishments face particular challenges in data protection, laws and regulations require them to take increasing care with information security issues.  The very nature of education requires secure sharing of information without data loss, in addition the problems of managing distributed networks and protecting them from attack are encountered frequently.  NETASQ’s products are equipped with IPSec VPN to deliver encrypted communications, with the SSL VPN portal giving remote users a dedicated, secure Internet connection.  Its intrusion prevention engine also incorporates the latest technologies and uses a number of different analyses to deliver enhanced levels of security.

Towards the end of this June, Exa had implemented nearly 40 NETASQ U70 firewall devices and will have implemented approximately 1500 by the end of 2013.