HIPAA News

Bradford Networks Secures Guest and Contractor Network Access with New Enterprise Offering

(Aprl 09, 2008)-- Bradford Networks, provider of comprehensive network access control (NAC) solutions, announced its new NAC Director Guest/Contractor Services (GCS) solution, which gives organizations the advanced security and operational tools required to manage guest, contractor, and strategic business partner network access. NAC Director GCS secures unmanaged laptops and PDAs, is easily added to existing networks, and provides a simple upgrade path to complete NAC capabilities.

Organizations are under increasing pressure to provide network access to guests, strategic partners, and the contingent workforce – temporary, freelance, and contract workers. In the last five years, the staffing industry has doubled and it will double again to a $200 billion industry by 2010, according to BusinessWeek.

NAC Director GCS automates user authentication plus device registration and assessment for wireless and wired networks. New self-service and sponsor features provide network administrators with simple and secure options to create network credentials. By enabling sponsors to print, email, or short message login details, the new product unburdens the help desk from these routine tasks. NAC Director GCS also tracks enterprise-owned assets, ensuring proper separation of network services and offers standalone or integrated authentication options to ease administration.

To support regulatory compliance requirements, including PCI, GLBA, HIPAA, and SOX, the new solution provides detailed audit trails through enterprise-wide visibility and tracking of all users and their devices.

NAC Director GCS will be available in summer 2008. Its advanced guest access features will be integrated into Bradford’s complete NAC solutions, NAC Director and Campus Manager. Enterprises that deploy NAC Director GCS and later want to implement Bradford’s full NAC capabilities – endpoint compliance, usage policy enforcement, and VPN support – can do so with just a license upgrade. NAC Director GCS pricing starts at $7,995.

“Network access control is a critical security process for safely meeting demands to support changing business requirements to allow contractors and guests to access the network and to allow employees to use consumer grade devices for business purposes,” said John Pescatore, Vice President Distinguished Analyst, Gartner Inc. “While providing secure access to contractors, temps and other guest workers is just a subset of full NAC, it does allow security managers to show near term return on investment while implementing the foundation of secure network access.”

For NaviMedix, Inc., of Cambridge, MA, which provides communications between 420,000 healthcare providers, insurance companies, and care management firms, strategic use of contractors helps power the company’s explosive growth. “Bradford’s technology has provided us the opportunity to significantly reduce administrative overhead by automating network security. Managing network access for guests and contractors used to be a manual process. Now NAC Director GCS does it all automatically, allowing my staff to focus on other assignments with the comfort that the network is safe and secure,” said Craig Richard, Information Technology Manager.

“More than 2.5 million contingent workers and strategic partners are on site at enterprises every day,” said Mike Gadoury, Bradford Networks founder and CEO. “NAC Director GCS provides stretched IT staffs with a pragmatic, cost-effective solution to providing these workers secure access to the information and resources they need to do their jobs.”

Bradford Networks has pioneered advanced NAC solutions since 2002 and currently secures over one million users worldwide in education, healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, and government markets.

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