News

Lightweight Agent-based Security Management Application added to Bradford Campus Manager

Concord, N.H. – Bradford Networks, developer of Security and Policy Enforcement Solutions for Enterprise Networks, today announced that it has expanded its endpoint compliance security management application by adding persistent agent functionality.

Bradford believes that it is important to offer a Security Management Application (SMA) that offers both an agent and agent-less based option (persistent vs. non-persistent). Bradford’s customers now have the choice within the Campus Manager solution to select the best implementation to meet their particular needs, which clearly varies from customer to customer.

“There are pros and cons to each type of implementation that affects support, user satisfaction, costs, political issues, and more,” said Mike Gadoury, Founder and CEO of Bradford Networks. He added, “We felt it was important to develop both security implementation options and let the customer decide which one was best for their environment.”

In today’s Information Technology environment, addressing security is one of the biggest challenges facing every IT staff. Threats from both inside and outside the network are a continuous concern. Security issues are often responsible for network outages, lost productivity, high usage of network support resources, and most critically, the potential for compromised data.

Bradford Networks has developed a multi-tiered security management application that will help fight against the spread of viruses, malicious attacks, and security vulnerabilities at the source. Our goal is to protect the network at the point of access, from the time a user connects to the network, by checking every device to ensure that it meets the minimum security policy set in the network.

The solution consists of a three-step process:

1. Every device is checked before being allowed to connect to the production network.
2. Non-compliant ‘at risk’ devices are isolated in a Quarantine VLAN for remediation.
3. Remediation provides ‘self-help’ to resolve issues without helpdesk intervention.

If a device is validated as meeting security requirements and does not pose a security concern, then it is allowed to connect to the appropriate VLAN according to policy and roles of the user. If the device is ‘at risk’ then it is directed to a secure Quarantine VLAN where the user must remediate the issues. The remediation process is web-browser based and incorporates a self-help structure, ideally not requiring the involvement of technical support resources to resolve their issues.

Bradford ’s goal is to offer both options, agent and agent-less, and tightly integrate them into Bradford Campus Manager, so that we can deliver a robust Endpoint Compliance and Network Access Control solution. This allows a complete All-in-One solution that handles policy enforcement, quarantine and remediation.

The new agent functionality will support Microsoft Windows platforms and will be released in Campus Manager Version 2.4, which will be available within 30 days.