The new Aventail Mobile networking platform offers added flexibility to large financial institutions, in particular those that operate over a virtual private network with secure socket layer (SSL) encryption.
According to John Menezes, president and CEO of Cyberklix Inc., customers have been crying out for SSL VPN functionality in hand-held devices.
“The feedback we have been getting from our clients has been for a mobile solution to access their corporate resources,” said Menezes, whose consulting firm in Mississauga, Ont., provides information security and IP networking services. Among Cyberklix’s clients are Sun Life Financial, TD Bank Financial Group, CIBC, BMO Nesbitt Burns, Environment Canada and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority.
“If you work for an insurance company, for example, and you’re on the road, you don’t want to always have to be pulling out your laptop and then hooking up to the Internet to process a claim. You can now access your company’s network from your Blackberry or from your phone.
“What’s really neat about the Aventail Mobile is that the VPN knows when you’re logging in from a Blackberry and you’ll have access to the applications that are supported by the smaller screen.
“The mobility feature is an example of notable flexibility that we’re able to offer our customers to enhance productivity,” said Menezes.
Aventail Mobile provides access to applications from mobile devices with security and granular access control, according to Chris Witeck, Aventail’s director of product management.
“SSL was designed with highly secure encryption. By writing granular policy rules in layers four to seven, clients are provided with access to very specific applications,” said Witeck.
“Rules can be written specifically for home users and another set for mobile users, allowing access to only the sub-net or domain. Simply, the SSL VPN is an object-based model that determines who the user is, what the resources are and where the user is coming from.”
“Aventail Mobile is integrated into our unified policy and end point control functions. The program interrogates the end point and classifies the device into a policy zone, allowing access only to authorized and relevant applications. Authorized users are given access to only the named resources, with no direct network connection,” said Witeck.
Aventail Mobile supports all major operating systems, including Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile, DoCoMo, and Symbian and provides one gateway and a common management and user experience for all devices, whether a home PC, laptop, kiosk or mobile device.
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