Avaya's Virtual Private Network portfolio designed to protect wireless networks from hackers' attack

The new application - the Avaya Wireless VPN - is designed to address the most challenging wireless local area network (LAN) security requirements. This is particularly important in today's business environment, in which enterprises face new attacks by hackers who may be able to discover the algorithm that encrypts data before it is broadcast over wireless LANs.

The Avaya Wireless VPN requires additional steps to authenticate users, and protects the confidentiality and integrity of the wireless data being transmitted.

"All our customers need security in their wireless communications, which we provide, but today there's more awareness that wireless radio links can potentially be compromised. As a result, customers' networks need more robust security that's consistent with the IP Security Protocol Charter (IPSec) VPN standards commonly used in wide area networks (WANs), such as the Internet," said Joe Gow, senior solutions manager for Avaya's MultiService Networking Infrastructure VPN group.

"A university may not be very concerned about the security of students' web research - but a hospital would want to know that patient data being transmitted to doctors is secure. And a financial institution needs to provide highest security possible to transmit customer account information over wireless links," he said.

Avaya already provides security in wireless communications consistent with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11b standards for wireless LANs.
By requiring additional steps to authenticate users, and by protecting the confidentiality and integrity of the wireless data being transmitted, the Avaya Wireless IPSec VPN solutions deliver an even higher level of security for wireless networks and provide "WAN-quality" Internet Protocol (IP) data security - comparable with security over wired networks.

This offers additional investment protection for an organisation's wireless LAN solutions. Outdoor wireless network connections between locations can also leverage the protection of Avaya Wireless VPN to secure the wireless router links using standards-based IPSec VPN solutions fully integrated with the in-house LAN capabilities.

Avaya Wireless VPN is an added feature to the Avaya Wireless portfolio, which already protects wireless communications over radio links with options for standard 802.11b 64 and 128 bit WEP data encryption, non-WEP RC4 encryption, optional additional RADIUS authentication. IPSec VPN is also available now. Avaya's wireless LAN solutions handle security issues with the Avaya Access Point wireless gateways and the Avaya Wireless PC cards.

Avaya Wireless VPN also offers the industry's most advanced and easy-to-use policy management tools to manage the network and control access to the network resources.

Avaya's VPNs - which can serve small and medium enterprises as well as large data centers -- give enterprises a secure way to effectively deploy their solutions, such as Internet Protocol telephony, customer relationship management and unified communications.