AirTight Rated "Positive" in Leading Industry Analyst Firm MarketScope on Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention Systems

AirTight Networks, the global leader for wireless intrusion prevention products and services today announced that AirTight has been rated "Positive" in Gartner's MarketScope for Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention Systems report. The July 2008 report was authored by John Pescatore, VP, Distinguished Analyst and John Girard, VP, Distinguished Analyst at Gartner.

Vendors were evaluated on five criteria -- customer experience, offering (product) strategy, overall viability (business unit, financial strategy, organization), marketing execution, product/service. AirTight was rated "Positive."

The results of the Gartner report are important because IT decision makers "regularly refer to Gartner to inform their decisions about technology purchases," according to the annual Hill & Knowlton Tech Decision Makers study released earlier this year. The study also found that "Gartner is seen as the most credible industry analyst firm (especially by IT managers)."

"AirTight continues to be the leader in providing its customers with the most robust wireless intrusion prevention systems on the market backed by IP developed specifically for the unique challenges that wireless security presents," said David King, Chairman and CEO of AirTight. "Gartner's thorough analysis of technology markets sets the standard for IT decision makers. We believe this second 'Positive' rating from Gartner solidifies AirTight's leadership position in the market and our commitment to developing products and services that keep our customers networks and data secure from current and emerging wireless threats."

According to the MarketScope report, "Wireless networks remain a potentially significant vulnerability for enterprises, as a continuing stream of WLAN-based security incidents demonstrates. Since the majority of enterprises are now supporting wireless LANs, enterprises need to assure that vulnerability management and intrusion prevention processes are extended to cover wireless networks as well as wired networks. WLAN security monitoring is required to assure that supported WLANs are kept secure and that users do not install their own technology where WLANs (or faster technology, such as 802.11n) are not supported."

About Airtight's Products

The AirTight SpectraGuard solution family has achieved industry leadership based on patented technology that blocks wireless threats immediately and automatically, locates wireless devices and events with pinpoint precision and eliminates the false alarms that plague busy network operations and IT professionals.

Both its onsite WIPS product, SpectraGuard Enterprise and its recently introduced on demand hosted vulnerability management service, SpectraGuard Online are "lean back" solutions providing easy deployment and automated scanning and reporting with little human intervention.

Recent magazine reviews have awarded five stars to SpectraGuard Enterprise and praised it as "a wireless security solution that's easy to deploy, elegantly simple and frighteningly effective," and a " a unique wireless security solution that can automatically classify and control access points (APs) and wireless clients." SpectraGuard® Enterprise was also named a finalist n the SC Magazine 2008 Reader Trust Award "Best Wireless Security Solution" category of the competition.

SpectraGuard Enterprise and SpectraGuard SAFE, AirTight's endpoint protection product, have achieved Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 2 certification from the National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (CCEVS). ( http://www.niap-ccevs.org/cc-scheme/vpl ). SpectraGuard SAFE is the first end point wireless security product to achieve this certification.

AirTight's products, which have consistently outperformed its competitors in head-to-head, in-depth evaluations (including Tolly and Information Security), are protected by solid portfolio of intellectual property.

AirTight's Patent Portfolio

AirTight invented and delivered the first comprehensive WIPS in the industry and pioneered autoclassification which eliminates the need for manual methods of base-lining wireless security which are expensive, error prone, hard to sustain and not scalable. AirTight received a patent on its WIPS invention in the United States, the 7,002,943 patent. Last year, the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) ruled in favor of AirTight Networks and its U.S. Patent No. 7,002,943 in an interference action provoked by competitor, AirDefense.

AirTight now has a total of six U.S. patents, one more U.S. Patents allowed and one Australian patent. It has more than 25 U.S. and international patents pending, many of which are undergoing active examination at patent offices of various countries and are expected to be granted this year.

"Our patented technology has proven over and over again that security and simplicity are not mutually exclusive. With AirTight's fully automated solutions, organizations with resource and budget constraints no longer need to make a hare choice between 'High' security or 'No' security and are able to take full advantage of wireless technologies for driving business value," continued King.