Alcatel-Lucent is rolling out an upgraded operating system designed to bring
greater security and access control to its OmniSwitch family of LAN
switches.
With the Alcatel-Lucent Operating System 6.3.4 release, the vendor is
integrating the CyberGatekeeper technology from InfoExpress, which ensures that
endpoints connecting to the enterprise network are checked for health and
compliance with an organization’s endpoint security policy.
In addition, the new OS release—announced April 15—also enables IT administrators
to give employees and guests access to the network while still ensuring that
corporate assets on the network are secure.
“IT departments want and need security solutions that are effective and easy
to deploy,” Michael Emelianoff, vice president of enterprise security solutions
for Alcatel-Lucent, said in a statement.
With the new features and the integration with InfoExpress’ technology,
enterprises will still be able to secure their corporate information while
continuing to give employees access to such technologies as VOIP (voice over
IP) and mobile applications, Emelianoff said.
InfoExpress’ CyberGatekeeper Host Integrity Check Module not only checks on
the health and compliance of connecting endpoints, but also sends noncompliant
endpoint devices to a remediation network until they are brought up to
compliance.
In addition, the new operating system release enables IT administrators to
create easily defined user profiles that are mapped directly to network and
security policies. With this capability, IT administrators can base users'
profiles on the role an employee or guest has within the company and define
access to the network, application and bandwidth.
It also offers a Web-based captive portal, which grabs packets for a nonauthenticated
user and sends it to a predefined Web page that asks the user to provide
authentication credentials before they’re allowed onto the network.
In addition to the security features, the revised OS offers a host of new
network availability, performance and uptime capabilities, including compliance
with the ITU-T G.8032 standard for Ethernet
Ring Protection, data path redundancy and recovery times of less than 50
milliseconds for Ethernet ring topologies, according to company officials.
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