iPass secures the enterprise
IPass announced the availability of Virtual Office and Device Lockdown solutions as part of the company’s effort to provide enterprises with a unified package that lets employees securely work from mobile and remote broadband connections.
With Virtual Office, an enterprise user can access a corporate VPN from almost any kind of connection, said Piero DePaoli, product marketing manager for iPass.
“The point of this is that we’ve made the connection experience for the user identical in all those scenarios — even those [where] completely different authentication methods and security practices were used in the background — so the user doesn’t have to actually understand anything about it,” DePaoli said. “They click to find an available network, click to connect and iPass does the rest.”
One reason iPass can offer such a comprehensive connectivity portfolio is the company’s acquisition of GoRemote earlier this year, which provided expertise in fixed broadband services, DePaoli said. Including home connection in the iPass suite of offerings allows enterprises to maintain securely managed network usage — something many enterprises overlook amid an explosion of connectivity options.
Device Lockdown helps secure the enterprise network by automatically ensuring that a device accessing the corporate VPN complies with its policies, including installation of security software, DePaoli said. “All this happens without any interaction by the user,” he said. “When the PC sees the Internet, we will lock it up so that it only can get to iPass servers, and the iPass server will check to see that it is in compliance. If it is, great. If it’s not, we’ll fix that on behalf of the user.”
And, when a laptop is stolen, a “poison pill” that deletes all data can be pushed to the device as soon as it connects to the Internet, DePaoli said. In addition, a policy can be created to wipe out the data if the device does not connect to the Internet for an extended period of time, he said.
Separately, iPass also announced agreements extending its mobility management services to 3G wireless coverage in China, Japan and Hong Kong. All of these agreements are with carriers that utilize CDMA-based networks, DePaoli said.
