VPN offers peace of mind: appliance makes difference in decision to deploy wireless - Wireless Security - Atomate Corp

Communications News, Nov, 2003

Atomate Corp., with headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif., has a number of key employees who travel extensively and work remotely from various customer sites and university laboratories across the West Coast. Its cutting-edge research and development projects require considerable collaboration among the various experts on staff. Employees often request co-workers with different areas of expertise to review their documents, so working documents are stored on the corporate server with meticulous tracking methods in place.

Founded in early 2003 by nanotechnology pioneers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California (Santa Barbara), the fast-growing, 10-person company develops products that solve significant problems in the synthesis of nanostructures. The field is highly competitive, making the security of Atomate's corporate network critical to the company's future.

"We wanted the convenience of a wireless network, but not at the expense of our corporate privacy," says Brian Lim, founder and CEO of Atomate. "And, as a small company, we wanted a product that addressed our pocketbook as well as our networking needs.

"When you're on the road for a week at a time, it's not possible to carry everything on your laptop," he adds. "Even if you download all relevant files from the server, the pace at which we are working makes it impossible to keep up to date without having access to the documents on which we're collaborating. These documents are sometimes revised several times a day."

Typically, the scientists at Stanford who need to access documents on the company server in Santa Barbara request documents be e-mailed to them over the public Internet-leaving them vulnerable to the prying eyes of competitors and hackers.

To address this challenge, the company decided to implement a new networking system, and identified a virtual private network (VPN) as a desirable attribute. The VPN provides remote workers with a secure, high-speed connection to the company's private network.

A second consideration was that projects are in progress all over the corporate headquarters building, so employees wanted the freedom to roam with their laptops. "It simply wasn't practical to pull cables to the patio, no matter how much we wanted to benefit from the inspirational view of the Santa Barbara landscape," Lim says.

With such a highly mobile and collaborative workforce, Lim decided to look for a wireless local area network (WLAN) solution that could also offer VPN access to the servers in Santa Barbara.

One drawback to a wireless network, however, can be its security. Working on highly sensitive projects, Atomate could not chance having its trade secrets revealed. Stone competitors consider corporate spying an acceptable practice to gain a competitive edge. The company could not risk using a system that would allow its WLAN to be penetrated by competitors lurking in the parking lot, or "war drivers" piggybacking onto a free Internet connection. Therefore, for Atomate, the security of its wireless network was of paramount importance. So critical was the issue that the company was prepared to relinquish the convenience of wireless unless a highly secure system could be implemented.

Brian Lim already had experience in tracking down a wireless solution at his previous company, which had faced similar challenges in 2002. His research then led to the selection of the Cable/ DSL ProSafe Wireless VPN Security Firewall, model

FVM318, from NETGEAR, which offered a high number of VPN tunnels. Lim's experience with the product had been so positive that he was inclined to use the FVM318 as the backbone of his new company's network, as well.

First, Lira checked to see if other companies had released new, comparable products in the months since he had first evaluated the NETGEAR solution. He looked at products from a number of vendors, but they did not offer the level of security he wanted. One offered a business-class solution, but was out of his price range. As a small company, Atomate did not need a solution to support thousands of users, but it did need the same high level of protection against hackers and eavesdroppers offered by enterprise-class solutions. The NETGEAR product was, in fact, still the best choice for him.

Lim set up the FVM318 at the Atomate offices in April. According to Lim, "The entire process was measured in minutes. It's been running continuously for months."

One aspect of the FVM318 that Lira finds highly useful is that he could set up the system to perform its basic functions immediately, and then, over time, has been able to implement the more advanced features, experimenting with different options.

"The new system has proven popular with Atomate employees for the freedom it provides," says Lim. They can bring their notebook computers into the company conference room and set up presentations wirelessly, without worrying that competitors could be "sniffing" for tips on the status of product development. They can also work on the Atomate patio without concerns about compromising important data.