Customers Worldwide Transform Online Collaboration Business Practices with Juniper Networks' Secure Meeting Solution

Business Wire, Nov 8, 2004

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- More Than 650 Enterprises Adopt Industry's Only Security-Audited Web Meeting Solution Due to Its Security and Control Features for Online Collaboration

Juniper Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq:JNPR) today announced that customers worldwide continue to deploy its NetScreen Secure Meeting online collaboration solution, transforming the way they conduct cross-enterprise online collaboration and Web meetings with increased security and controls versus third-party hosted services and enterprise software-based solutions. Secure Meeting is the industry's only security-audited product for secure, cost-effective online meetings and application sharing sessions. Offered as a dedicated appliance since April, more than 650 companies are benefiting from anytime, anywhere online meetings and the secure real-time collaborative sessions that Secure Meeting functionality delivers.

"We have had a lot of problems with other conferencing solutions and prefer Secure Meeting's simplicity and security," said Adam Goldstein, senior IT security specialist, Villanova University. "We provide remote assistance and troubleshooting for a large number of platforms and systems, including many non-university machines. It's important to us that the meeting conductor has control over the access authorizations, and that he or she can be very granular about what's being shared. With Secure Meeting you show the specific applications that you need to, and you don't have to give up what's on your whole desktop."

Secure Meeting secures online collaboration beyond SSL-based transport, delivering strong authentication and integration with leading authentication, authorization and auditing (AAA) systems on a hardened, customer-premise device that protects against network penetration, invisible remote control and silent document leaks. Customers utilizing the secure, cost-effective functionality of Secure Meeting span industries worldwide, including financial services, government, healthcare, education and telecommunications. In addition to cross-enterprise online meetings and collaboration, customers utilize Secure Meeting to share private information protected by regulations, conduct training and perform remote desktop support.

"The current market momentum of appliance-based Web conferencing products further validates what our research has shown -- that security and control are key purchasing criteria for Web conferencing and real-time collaboration solutions, beyond pure cost," said Paul Ritter, senior analyst and research director, Wainhouse Research. "Appliance-based Web conferencing solutions, such as NetScreen Secure Meeting, provide a significant value proposition vis-a-vis traditional third-party hosted services and enterprise software-based products. This is especially true for organizations with business needs or technical requirements for solutions offering the utmost in security, a high degree of internal control, and straightforward means of deployment."

NetScreen Secure Meeting enables enterprises to instantly and securely provision online meetings, support sessions and conferences to hundreds of concurrent users per system without the potential security trade-offs and recurring costs of hosted services and software-based extranet deployments. Secure Meeting provides a wealth of features including authentication and authorization, central management, cross-platform support (Microsoft Corp. Windows, Apple Computer Inc. Mac OSX and Linux platforms), clustering and performance scalability, detailed audit logging, and granular access controls.

"ICAT is a small insurance company with business partners throughout the United States," said Joan Gargano, senior vice president of Information Technology, ICAT Managers, LLC. "Our customers use our website to quote and bind business with ICAT. We use Secure Meeting to work with our customers, both for initial training and to provide ongoing support for daily production through the site. Secure Meeting provides us a cost effective, convenient way for us to work directly with them, and helps improve customer service. It is much more flexible than WebEx, and increased customer service helps give us an edge over the competition."

Traditional Web conferencing services and peer-to-peer (P2P) desktop applications can circumvent corporate security policies, leaving the IT administrator without visibility into application sharing events. This problem can lead to unauthorized disclosures and file transfers, or the possible spread of P2P-based worms. By applying an infrastructure approach to user-to-user sessions, Secure Meeting enables enterprises to administer authentication, authorization and auditing (AAA), and can prevent confidential information from leaving the network undetected or the transfer of infected files via P2P file sharing.

While hosted service providers offer travel cost savings over face-to-face meetings, they still can be expensive due to recurring monthly fee structures. Until now, alternatives to hosted services were software-based collaboration extranet deployments, which can be complex, costly and can increase an enterprise's risk profile. Extranet deployments often require custom integration for security features and increase the number of public facing services that must be hardened against attack.