New Service Helps Enterprise IT Address Endpoint Vulnerabilities

iPass announced its new iPass Endpoint Policy Management service. This new service helps the IT department stay out in front of threats to the corporate network caused by worms, viruses and other malicious agents, reducing the risk of lost productivity and network downtime. It ensures that access to the corporate network is only given to end users who are running up-to-date and properly configured security and operating system software.

The iPass Endpoint Policy Management service is an optional addition to the iPass Corporate Access service that enables enterprise remote and mobile workers to securely access their corporate network from over 20,000 access points in more than 150 countries, including over 3,500 Wi-Fi and Ethernet broadband locations. It enforces policies pertaining to VPN version and configuration, personal firewall version and policy rules, anti-virus version and definition files, and operating system updates and patches.

This new capability is focused on mitigating the risks caused by events such as the summer of 2003’s worm attacks and is an extension of the ability of the iPass Corporate Access service to enforce, manage and administer policies around connection characteristics.

As with all aspects of iPass enterprise services, this capability is vendor-neutral. It allows the enterprise to take advantage of an optimal combination of best-of-breed security systems, while tying it all together with a single policy management solution.

The iPass Endpoint Policy Management service keeps connectivity simple for the user through integration with the iPassConnect service interface. Before allowing the user to connect to the corporate network, it identifies whether and how an endpoint is out of compliance and can automatically push out any required updates from iPass-hosted servers directly to the endpoint. This integrated approach allows the IT manager to protect the corporate network without impacting user productivity.