Australian Unity, an Australian integrated financial group, switches to Juniper Networks high-performance solutions

Issued by Global Research Partners for SecureData
Johannesburg, 02 Feb 2009

SecureData Security, part of JSE-listed SecureData Holdings and the leading sub-Saharan distributor for Juniper Networks, today announced that Australian Unity, one of Australia's leading integrated financial institutions, has invested in a comprehensive range of Juniper Networks campus solutions, which include switching and network security technologies that cost-effectively deliver services and comprehensive network access control (NAC) with centralised network management and reporting.

The campus solutions include Juniper Networks EX-series switches, the Secure Access 2500 SSL VPN appliance, Unified Access Control (UAC), the Security Threat Response Manager (STRM) and the Network and Security Manager (NSM), and will help enable the company to meet the growing and rigorous technical and security demands of its organisation while streamlining operations and reducing capital and operational expenses.

Australian Unity is a national healthcare, financial services and retirement living organisation with more than A$440 million in revenue. It provides services to more than 400 000 Australians, has over 185 000 associate members and employs over 1 000 staff.

"The tight integration of our business areas means we require mission critical and complex communications across numerous user types and functional divisions," commented Rupesh Kapadia, Project Manager, Business Technology, Australian Unity. "We needed to scale our infrastructure to meet growing business requirements and Juniper surpassed competitive solutions in both performance and cost. A major factor in our decision to go with Juniper was the JUNOS software, which reduces complexity and immensely simplifies our IT administration. The combined value of Juniper's Unified Access Control and comprehensive network security management systems further clinched the selection."

JUNOS software is Juniper's powerful, single source network operating system that runs Juniper routing, switching and security platforms. JUNOS software provides continuous carrier-class reliability, automated network operations and the open innovation that businesses such as Australian Unity demand, to quickly align the network with changing business requirements.

High-performance campus solutions

* The Juniper Networks EX-series switches provide high-performance, carrier-class Ethernet switching to help ensure Australian Unity maintains uninterrupted business operations.
* Juniper Networks Secure Access appliances combine the security of SSL with standards-based access controls, granular policy creation and unparalleled flexibility for reliable anytime, anywhere secure remote access applications.
* The Infranet Controller, the hardened, centralised policy management server that underpins UAC, combines user identity, device security state and network location information to create a unique network access control policy per user and per session. UAC can enforce access policy at Layer 2 using any vendor's 802.1X-enabled wireless access point or switch, including the EX-series Ethernet switches; at Layers 3 - 7, using any Juniper firewall platform, or both for greater granularity.
* Juniper's NSM further streamlines Australian Unity's administration with a single, powerful management interface and embedded templates for rapid, enterprise-wide policy provisioning. The combination of Juniper's Secure Access, UAC and NSM ensures that access and security policies created for remote access can also be used for LAN-based access, and vice versa.

"Healthcare and financial services organisations are increasingly aware of the critical role their enterprise networks play," added Shaun Page, Juniper's vice-president of Australia and New Zealand.

"These companies need both high performance and security, without compromise. The ability of our UAC solution to provide identity-based security and control at the port layer all the way to the edge means customers such as Australian Unity can be confident of data integrity across their entire network. Juniper's STRM solution further provides the integrated management of network and security operations to deliver real-time surveillance of mission-critical applications for more effective enterprise planning."

For further information, please contact David Naude at tel. +27 11 790 2500; fax +27 11 790 2599; e-mail davidn@securedata.co.za.

Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is the leader in high-performance networking. It offers a high-performance network infrastructure that creates a responsive and trusted environment for accelerating the deployment of services and applications over a single network, which in turn, fuels high-performance businesses.

SecureData

SecureData is a specialist, value-added distributor of perimeter, application, network, endpoint, storage and identity information security solutions and risk management solutions for the African sub-continent and Indian Ocean islands. A cross-section of the available solutions from SecureData illustrates wide coverage of the following information security and risk management domains: business continuity, security appliances and devices, hardware authentication, identity and access management, security and vulnerability management, secure content management, threat management and security services.

SecureData's information security and risk management solutions include best-of-breed solutions, devices and appliances for the perimeter, data centres, applications, network, endpoints, messaging and Web. In addition, as a value-add to vendor, channel and customer, SecureData also provides a full complement of support, pre-sales and professional services around the solutions positioned in each discrete security vertical. For more information, visit SecureData at http://www.securedata.co.za.

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