ComGuard, the value added distributors for leading wireless intrusion prevention (WIPS) products and services AirTight Networks in the Middle East region announced that recently Gartner awarded AirTight with “Strong Positive” rating in its 2011 Marketscope Report for Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention Systems.
A “Strong Positive” is the highest possible rating in a Gartner Marketscope. Gartner, Inc. is the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry The July 2011 report was authored by John Girard, VP, Distinguished Analyst, John Pescatore, VP, Distinguished Analyst and Tim Zimmerman, Research Director at Gartner.
Vendors were evaluated on five criteria – customer experience, offering (product) strategy, overall viability (business unit, financial strategy, organization), marketing execution, product/service.
Wi-Fi support is a standard extension of corporate networks, and enterprises must ensure that vulnerability management and intrusion prevention processes need to be extended to cover wireless and wired networks. WLAN security monitoring in the form of wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPSs) is required to ensure that supported WLAN performance is not impeded by interference or denial-of-service attacks, WLAN traffic is kept private and secure, users are prevented from installing unauthorized WLANs, and unsupported/unauthorized WLAN technologies are barred from operation.
“We are proud to have the value of our services in the WIPS market recognized by this ‘Strong Positive’ rating in the current Gartner Marketscope “AirTight’s continued explosive growth, even during the recent two years of economic downturn, underscores the marketplace recognition of the need for robust wireless threat protection and its trust in AirTight’s solutions. Enterprises should invest their precious IT security budget wisely and carefully choose a WIPS solution that gives them maximum business assurance with minimum administrative burden.” said David King, Chairman and CEO of AirTight Networks.
The Gartner report also concludes that, “Just like wired networks, wireless networks need to be monitored to both proactively detect vulnerabilities to accelerate mitigation and to quickly detect security incidents to support rapid incident response. Also, while the basic WiFi technology is mature, what Gartner calls the “Consumerization of IT” is driving demand for increased use of employee owned devices with wireless access, such as iPhones and iPads. This increases the need for WLAN monitoring to support Network Access Control functions for allowing wireless access to users who are allowed to use unmanaged devices. All this adds up to a continuing need for wireless monitoring and intrusion prevent to mitigate risk.”
The increasing dependency on wireless LANs to run business-critical operations, an ever-growing number of WiFi devices, and the growing sophistication of WiFi hack attacks has made wireless security a top priority for security administrators. It is interesting to note Gartner’s mention of the challenge posed by the proliferation of smartphones and other consumer devices which are flooding into the enterprise,” continued King.
Jayadevan K, Senior Vice President, Value Business at ComGuard, said, “We, at ComGuard, are committed to bringing the best of breed technologies to the region and AirTight Wireless Intrusion Prevention Systems (WIPS) is one such solution which is of immense value to enterprises.”
AirTight has addressed this by providing customers with visibility into the usage of smartphones and other mobile devices in their airspace and the ability to create watchlists to monitor their activity and location. AirTight’s goal has always been to keep ahead not only of emerging wireless threats but also the needs of our customers.
