Athena Security Offers Free Configuration Debugger

PRESS RELEASE

CHICAGO, October 18, 2010 — Athena Security, the makers of Athena FirePAC, a comprehensive enterprise firewall audit and operations tool, today announced that it will make the company's Configuration Debugger, the first and only software solution that network engineers can use for offline troubleshooting of service availability issues on Cisco, Check Point and Netscreen firewalls, available for a free download until Halloween.

The Athena's Configuration Debugger features all the tools and functionality for troubleshooting even the most complicated features related to firewalls from Cisco, Check Point and Juniper. It simulates the behavior of the firewall so line level technicians can quickly determine how the firewall is configured to allow or block traffic flows to reachable hosts or subnets.

"The Athena Configuration Debugger is a far more convenient alternative to Cisco's Packet Tracer for applying virtual packets to troubleshoot dropped services," said David Hurst, CTO, Athena Security. "Focused, flexible and easy to use, firewall engineers can use this tool to quickly get to the heart of the rules that cause great confusion.”

With the limited time free download, users can try the Athena Configuration Debugger to examine the entire configuration in a matter of minutes. Using virtual packets, users can get interactive results that allow them to easily explore rule/object relationships to isolate the specific location for fixes fast.

The Debugger is the only product in the marketplace to:

* Support a mixed environment including Cisco PIX, ASA, FWSM, Check Point, and Juniper Netscreen firewalls. You can bring all of these firewalls into Athena and isolate the ACLs, NATs and Routes that require remediation. * Troubleshoot packets specified by IP ranges, and a number of services, or entire subnets. * Does not require any firewall connectivity to perform a trace. * Isolate all applicable interfaces based on routing and NATing

Troubleshooting service availability issues often require a complete examination of the configuration and an accurate mapping of how polices relate to the structural and order dependencies between all of the ACLs, NATs and Routes. This is a time consuming process. The Athena Configuration Debugger is the industry's only tool to make these rule relationships explicitly clear, allowing engineers to target exact areas in the firewall configuration where critical services are being blocked so they can be restored quickly.

Users can actually specify the traffic they are trying to debug using a single IP address, a number of services, or a subnet. The Debugger will perform a reachability analysis to automatically determine access lists or zone-to-zone policies, and evaluates how they respond to the user's actions and produces the results organized by rules and by packets. The Debugger examines any settings or implied rules that could affect the resulting traffic flows.

The Debugger also provides advanced comparison capabilities where it links each rule and object change to its impact on added or deleted traffic flows. This enables the ability to identify what specific changes are responsible for a service disruption.

To get the Athena Configuration Debugger, IT managers can select any Cisco, CheckPoint, or Netscreen firewall, even the most complex, and send an email to Athena Security at [email protected] with the message subject: Free Configuration Debugger. In the body of the email, include the IP address of the firewall and an Athena representative will provide the free license. The free license is good for one year from the date of installation and the offer is available until October 31, 2010.

About Athena Security

Athena offers infrastructure analysis tools that identify the precise relationship between firewall rules and network services in a single device or across a complex network. With a comprehensive focus on configuration data, Athena helps network and security engineers perform a "what-if" analysis that reduces the reliance on diagnostics and validation by ad.hoc testing. Over 300 companies turn to Athena products, Athena FirePAC and Athena Verify, for standardized and consistent automation and intelligence to reduce the time and effort required for policy management on network security devices. For more information see http://www.athenasecurity.net.

Media Contact:

Anjali Gurnani Athena Security Phone: 630-629-0600 x21 [email protected]

Dan Chmielewski Madison Alexander PR for Athena Security Phone: 714-832-8716 [email protected]