Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Richardson-based Sipera Systems providing security consultation to a range of higher education institutions

By Pegasus News wire

Sipera Systems, the leader in real-time Unified Communications (UC) security, announced successful recent deployments of its comprehensive UC security solutions at multiple universities in North America.

Sipera's award-winning UC-Sec appliances have been deployed by multiple major universities in North America, and Sipera is providing security consultation to a range of higher education institutions. In total, universities representing a combined user base of more than 250,000 students and staff across their respective campuses are working with Sipera to understand and adopt the best practices around security for VoIP and UC.

"When we set out to deploy VoIP as part of our communications transformation, we planned from the outset that we would never compromise the security and privacy of the many different types of data and communications traversing our network," said Cindy Phillips, director, NIUTEL and IT Customer Support Services of Northern Illinois University. "We have selected Sipera's UC-Sec appliance so that we can deploy highly effective, targeted security that ensures confidentiality."

The UC-Sec plug-and-play security appliance is a breakthrough in communications security for next-generation networks, protecting the privacy, integrity and availability of VoIP, IP video, IM and other unified communications traffic.

With UC-Sec, university IT operations can implement targeted security for specific applications, types of data, and users with no impact on communications performance. UC-Sec also offers comprehensively secure SIP trunk termination for lower cost telecommunications.

"College campuses are progressive adopters of UC networks and applications, for both students and staff communicating internally and externally," said Andy Asava, vice president of worldwide sales at Sipera. "We have a number of IT professionals at our education customers who are sleeping better knowing Sipera is protecting their UC networks, students and staff, and mission-critical communications."

IT professionals deploying VoIP and UC at universities often face a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, they want to retain an "open" environment, allowing students and faculty to connect to the UC infrastructure with almost any device without requiring IT's direct control over each device. This often means that key communications systems must be exposed to the Internet or other publicly accessible networks without a formal DMZ. But at the same time, communication systems can carry highly sensitive data that must be protected, including student records, financial data, and even patient-related data in the case of medical schools.

The UC-Sec appliance eliminates the dilemma. UC-Sec provides comprehensive privacy and encryption, access control and authentication, threat mitigation, and security policy enforcement for real-time traffic. With this solution, IT professionals can target specific systems and applications, users and user groups, resources and data, and exercise full security control over these elements, without reducing communications performance or undercutting the open, multi-device environment. Furthermore, UC-Sec can terminate SIP trunks and provide an added layer of security and control over trunk traffic while enabling a rapid return-on-investment via lower cost telecommunications services.

UC-Sec incorporates the industry's most advanced protection against security threats, based on research from the VIPER Lab, Sipera's security research arm. VIPER also offers the industry's leading security architecture consultation and UC penetration testing services.

The Sipera UC-Sec products are comprehensive, real-time UC security solutions that simplify and protect next-generation communications over any network to any device. Dozens of customers around the world rely on the UC-Sec appliances to safeguard their communications and boost compliance with privacy laws, regulatory mandates and mission-critical confidentiality requirements.

Source: Sipera Systems

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