Great Bay Software Launches Beacon 3.1

PRESS RELEASE

SAN DIEGO, CA and DOVER, NH " September 10, 2009 " Great Bay Software, the industry leader in endpoint profiling, today announced the availability of significant new features in its award-winning Beacon Endpoint Profiler. Beacon 3.1 offers a major step forward in identity-based endpoint discovery, monitoring, and provisioning, while also addressing growing challenges in the security and operations of 802.1X and NAC-enabled environments. ' Advancements in Beacon 3.1 include new Endpoint Profiling techniques, Change of Access (COA) capabilities, and IF-MAP events. These new features reflect the continued need for increased security in managed and unmanaged endpoints, and deliver the industry's most flexible and comprehensive discovery system for network-attached devices.

"Change of Access is becoming recognized as one of the greatest operational challenges in the day-to-day management of the authentication-enabled network, yet is one that very few have solved," said Jamie Sanbower, Director of Security Solutions at Force 3, Inc. "The delivery of Great Bay's open COA solution will solve one of the most persistent challenges in managing enterprise NAC or 802.1X deployments."

Beacon 3.1 allows the network administrator to dynamically signal the network and the authentication system that newly discovered devices require network access. Beacon can designate different methods for initializing this change for different devices, depending on their identity, and utilizes the existing control plane and authority for NAC and authentication functionality.

"Our technology partnerships with Cisco, Juniper, and Symantec were an important consideration in the design choices for the COA functionality," said Steve Pettit, President of Great Bay Software. "We deliberately took this approach so that all of our partners' NAC offerings can leverage this critical functionality."

Five years ago, Great Bay Software and its Beacon product became the de-facto industry standard for the discovery and profiling of all network-attached devices and enabling the deployment of 802.1X. Since that time, the data in Beacon has been shared and leveraged in customer deployments by numerous other IT and IT Security systems. With the release of IF-MAP support, Beacon extends its support for industry standards by allowing adopters of Trusted Computing Group standards to receive event information from Beacon in a standard-based way.

Pricing and Availability Beacon 3.1 is available for immediate download from Great Bay Software's support site and as a free upgrade for current maintenance contract customers. In addition, the company is continuing its policy of providing free remote upgrade assistance with this version to current Beacon maintenance contract customers.

About Great Bay Software Great Bay Software, Inc. is a software development firm specializing in Enterprise Endpoint discovery, identity, and 802.1X. The company's flagship product, Beacon Endpoint Profiler, features applications that include the enabling and extending of NAC and 802.1X, providing a comprehensive inventory of all network attached endpoints, and supporting compliance initiatives mandated in today's business climate. For more information on the Beacon system from Great Bay Software, please visit www.greatbaysoftware.com or call 800.503.1715.