Reggie Best, executive vice president of AEP Networks, said the company aims to show AEP now has a very full story around the government sector and cited market research that has forecast growth rates in excess of 40%. He said that between 20% and 25% of its UK business is with county councils, and he can see a range of opportunities around the business of securing remote access for central government, all the way to the offices of diplomatic outposts.
A first move is the launch this week of a hardware-based VPN encryptor for laptops which has enhanced grade approval from the UK government CESG, a security rating for the protection of classified information recognized across Europe. The new Net-EB line provides data confidentiality and source authentication for network traffic and meets ITSEC E3 level and US Government FIPS 140-1(4) standards.
The vendor will also continue on its track of developing application-specific security appliances. Last year it launched a box to secure access to applications built around Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server to serve Unix and Java applications to any device, over any connection, and without the need for any desktop or software emulation software.
It was followed by an email gateway appliance to secure Microsoft Outlook Web Access usage over SSL VPN, and that will be followed with a third. Best said: Expect to see SGA-T, a Netilla Secure Gateway Appliance configured for secure tunneling for up to 25 concurrent users and priced very aggressively at $2,495.
In the context of post-merger product rationalization, Best said the AEP-derived A-Gate line will be replaced by the equivalent but more feature-rich Netilla devices.
The company expects to be profitable in 2005, with a workforce of 60.
