INS selects the Aventail ex-1500 SSL VPN appliance to secure anywhere access for 500 network consultants.

Aventail Corporation (www.aventail.com), a provider of clientless SSL VPN appliances and services, recently announced that INS has selected the Aventail EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance to secure anywhere remote access for 500 consultants. INS is part of a growing list of industry leaders, including Aetna, Cerner Corporation, DuPont, IBM Global Services, and Praxair that rely on Aventail's award winning SSL VPN technology.

INS, a provider of network consulting services and solutions, has consultants in 33 offices throughout the US and Europe who need to efficiently leverage the Internet for remote access while at customer sites. Previous to Aventail, they were using a traditional IPSec VPN, but the VPN model with specialized software proved too complex to easily integrate with a wide variety of equipment. In addition, INS consultants working at customer sites were often unable to access their company's VPN from behind the customer's firewall, limiting productivity. Since Aventail's SSL VPN can handle NAT issues, proxy-based firewalls and stateful inspection firewalls, INS was able to replace its IPSec VPN for mobile access. For the first time, INS can now truly deliver anywhere access, regardless of the network usage policies that are set in place at customer sites.

"As a long-time IPSec VPN user we've run into some inherent limitations of the technology for remote access, including complexity and high support costs," said Bob Johnson, director of information systems at INS. "We selected Aventail because they offered the best clientless access through a Web browser and the broadest set of access options, delivering true VPN access based on SSL. While IPSec continues to be our choice for site-to-site VPNs, the Aventail EX-1500 provides the ideal remote access VPN solution for our needs."

INS did the due diligence and evaluated many SSL VPN products to ensure that Aventail's technology delivered a superior value proposition over competitive offerings. Backed by the award-winning Aventail ASAP Platform, the EX-1500 proved to be the only SSL VPN solution that could combine the desktop security and application support of a traditional IPSec VPN with the clientless convenience of an SSL VPN. In addition to Web browser access for internal Web applications and file servers, INS consultants get full VPN application access with additional network and desktop protection by using Aventail Connect, a Web-delivered Windows agent. This includes split tunneling control, support for UDP applications, personal firewall and anti-virus detection, network password change notification and native access to file servers and their contents. Additionally, with OnDemand, a small downloadable Java agent for access to Web and client/server applications, INS users enjoy the benefits of simple, secure access to a broad set of applications without requiring a persistent client.

Now, whether in a hotel, at a customer site, or sitting in a cafe, INS consultants can securely access critical network resources to achieve the level of collaboration and understanding needed to develop optimal client solutions.

"As network security experts, INS saw the value of the EX-1500 SSL VPN appliance, which provides the functionality remote users need without the complexity and cost commonly associated with IPSec VPNs," said Evan Kaplan, president and CEO of Aventail. "By enabling INS to offer remote access from any browser without security or management worries, INS is realizing an immediate ROI with increased business efficiencies. We are proud to continue our market-leading work with INS."