Nortel is delivering new solutions to integrate ‘Identity-Aware’ network security with unified communications technology, enabling enterprises to increase productivity, lower operating expenses and give them new competitive advantages by providing secure access to the right resources from anywhere and at any time.
The company is introducing Nortel’s Identity Engines portfolio to integrate identity-aware networking that delivers a new level of network security. Identity-aware networking determines who a user is, when they are accessing the network, what device they are using and where they are connecting from to determine the appropriate level of network access.
Unlike most enterprise networks that do not identify the users and cannot distinguish among employees, guests, executives and consultants for example, the Identity Engines portfolio provides valuable identity information about everyone on the network, giving network managers more visibility and control over user traffic.
“Identity-aware networking is an emerging network access control driver that will continue to increase in importance,” said Lawrence Orans, research director, Gartner. “This capability provides greater visibility and control over user behavior on the network, allowing enterprises to better monitor user traffic and enforce access to critical resources.”
“Nortel is charging forward, delivering new, industry-leading unified communications solutions that not only increase the tempo of the enterprise, but ensure that private data remains private,” said Joel Hackney , president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel. “With the Identity Engines portfolio, we are able to secure the use of the enterprise network, making sure that only those authorized are able to access it, regardless of location or device. By the same token, authenticated users are able to access only those resources that they are authorized to access. This portfolio will increase the level of security in our unified communications offering to ensure that the right information reaches the right decision makers at the right time.”
The Identity Engines portfolio provides a comprehensive Secure Guest Networking Solution , which simplifies guest management services by allowing non-technical staff to set up short-term accounts with access to only certain portions of the network. These accounts expire after a specified time period and are automatically removed from directories, increasing the level of security and reducing administration tasks.
Not only does the Identity Engines portfolio offer greater security through network-based identity management, but it also increases efficiency by providing centralized policy decision throughout the entire enterprise. It works across network silos, removing the need to create and manage hundreds of user groups and deploy multiple servers, leading to simplified management and lower costs.
“The Nortel Identity Engines technology provides customers with advanced policy capabilities with unique industry-leading features like identity routing and virtual attribute mapping,” said Joel Snyder, an industry NAC expert and partner at Opus One. “Its identity-based granular policies and ability to span user group directories puts it several steps ahead of other vendors.”
Because the solution is based on industry standards, the Nortel Identity Engines portfolio integrates with enterprises’ current network infrastructures (regardless of vendor) to provide the centralized policy decision, authentication and authorization needed to enforce role-based Network Access Control (NAC) for wired, wireless, and VPN networks. To further demonstrate its commitment to industry standards and customer choice, Nortel also joined the OpenSEA alliance to provide the market with a standards-based, cross-platform, open-source 802.1X client, offering an alternative to the proprietary technologies by competitors.
The technology foundation for these open, standards-based solutions came from Nortel’s recent purchase of the Identity Engines’ IP assets. The Nortel Identity Engines Portfolio is centered on the Identity Engines Ignition Server *, which acts as a powerful policy engine and directory service integrator to deliver network identity management across the network.
The Identity Engines portfolio augments the existing Nortel NAC offering by adding identity-aware networking, centralized policy decision over LAN, WLAN and VPN, strong 802.1X-based transport and analytics and reporting. Nortel is enhancing the Identity Engines offering by adding support for virtualization platforms and will offer the product as a VMware virtual appliance, which increases flexibility and reduces total cost of ownership.
In addition to the new portfolio, Nortel will continue to offer its Secure Network Access Switch series of products as NAC appliances focused on delivering health-checking capabilities for LAN environments over Layer 3 transport.
Nortel has made secure connectivity available to over 100 million users, worldwide.
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See Nortel website for more information or look for a local Nortel dealer here
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