New AirTight IPS Protects WEP

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- AirTight Networks, the leading provider of wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPS), today announced the addition of WEPGuard™ to SpectraGuard Enterprise®. SpectraGuard Enterprise is now the industry’s first and only proactive wireless intrusion prevention system to block and locate active WEP cracking attacks, detect and stop intruders using spoofed identity and compromised WEP keys and provide deep visibility into passive cracking exposure of legacy systems using WEP so that the risk can be accurately assessed. While WEP is fundamentally broken, WEPGuard provides the best available solution for companies to go beyond passive techniques and actively manage and mitigate risk.

These new capabilities, which will be available in SpectraGuard Enterprise in the fourth quarter of 2007, help retailers to meet the most recent version PCI DSS – version 1.1 - which added specific security requirements to protect networks and payment card data from wireless threats and risks.The PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical protective measures. This comprehensive Standard is intended to help organizations proactively protect customer account data.

"The overwhelming feedback at DEFCON 15 this year from our presentation on failure of WEP chaffing, as well as the publicity surrounding several high profile wireless retail breaches, indicates an urgent need especially in that sector for something to help protect legacy systems until such time as upgrades to more secure protocols such as WPA and WPA 2 can be affected,” said Pravin Bhagwat, CTO for AirTight Networks. "While some suggest that injecting chaff into the data stream is an effective way to confuse hackers, it is a passive approach which continuously eats up bandwidth and merely masks the problem leading to security by obscurity. Only active protection gives any measure of protection along with other best practices."

AirTight Networks Inc.