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

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 15, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- AirTight Networks, the global leader for wireless intrusion prevention (WIPS) products and services announced today that Gartner has rated AirTight "Strong Positive" in its 2011 MarketScope Report for Wireless LAN Intrusion Prevention Systems. A "Strong Positive" is the highest possible rating in a Gartner Marketscope. Gartner, Inc. is the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry The July 2011 report was authored by John Girard, VP, Distinguished Analyst, John Pescatore, VP, Distinguished Analyst and Tim Zimmerman, Research Director at Gartner. Full copies of the report are available from AirTight.

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Vendors were evaluated on five criteria – customer experience, offering (product) strategy, overall viability (business unit, financial strategy, organization), marketing execution, product/service.

The MarketScope report notes that, "Payment Card Industry requirements as well as a rush of consumer devices into the workplace put a premium on new detection capabilities and increased levels of integration with network infrastructure,"  and, "Wi-Fi support is a standard extension of corporate networks, and enterprises must ensure that vulnerability management and intrusion prevention processes need to be extended to cover wireless and wired networks. WLAN security monitoring in the form of wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPSs) is required to ensure that supported WLAN performance is not impeded by interference or denial-of-service attacks, WLAN traffic is kept private and secure, users are prevented from installing unauthorized WLANs, and unsupported/unauthorized WLAN technologies are barred from operation."

"We are proud to have the value of our services in the WIPS market recognized by this 'Strong Positive' rating in the current Gartner Marketscope. "AirTight's continued explosive growth, even during the recent two years of economic downturn, underscores the marketplace recognition of the need for robust wireless threat protection and its trust in AirTight's solutions," said David King, Chairman and CEO of AirTight. "Enterprises should invest their precious IT security budget wisely and carefully choose a WIPS solution that gives them maximum business assurance with minimum administrative burden."

The Gartner report also concludes that, "Just like wired networks, wireless networks need to be monitored to both proactively detect vulnerabilities to accelerate mitigation and to quickly detect security incidents to support rapid incident response. Also, while the basic WiFi technology is mature, what Gartner calls the "Consumerization of IT" is driving demand for increased use of employee owned devices with wireless access, such as iPhones and iPads. This increases the need for WLAN monitoring to support Network Access Control functions for allowing wireless access to users who are allowed to use unmanaged devices. All this adds up to a continuing need for wireless monitoring and intrusion prevent to mitigate risk."

"The increasing dependency on wireless LANs to run business-critical operations, an ever-growing number of WiFi devices, and the growing sophistication of WiFi hack attacks has made wireless security a top priority for security administrators. It is interesting to note Gartner's mention of the challenge posed by the proliferation of smartphones and other consumer devices which are flooding into the enterprise," continued King.  AirTight has addressed this by providing customers with visibility into the usage of smartphones and other mobile devices in their airspace and the ability to create watchlists to monitor their activity and location. AirTight's goal has always been to keep ahead not only of emerging wireless threats but also the needs of our customers. "

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 Cloud Services™ are low touch solutions providing easy deployment, automated scanning and reporting and Secure Wi-Fi Access with little human intervention.

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 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.

AirTight now has a total of 20 U.S. patents granted or allowed, and three international patents (UK, Australia and Japan) granted. It has more than 20 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.

MarketScope Disclaimer

The MarketScope is copyrighted 2011 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The MarketScope is an evaluation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the MarketScope, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest rating. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About AirTight

AirTight Networks is the global leader in wireless security and compliance solutions. AirTight's patented technology protects enterprises from the growing problem of Wi-Fi security threats, while allowing organizations to better manage their WLAN environment and comply with emerging wireless compliance standards (i.e. PCI). The Company's award-winning SpectraGuard wireless intrusion prevention solution (WIPS) family provides enterprise security and compliance professionals with unparalleled capabilities to accurately detect, classify, block and locate all Wi-Fi security threats, while helping network operations staff to quickly monitor and troubleshoot WLAN performance issues. AirTight's pioneering Cloud Services family of cloud-hosted subscription services delivers the world's first and only "No Capex" multi-tenant WIPS, PCI wireless compliance and controller-less WLAN access solutions all in a single device.  

AirTight's award-winning solutions are used by customers globally in the government, financial, retail, hospitality, telecom, technology, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare and education sectors AirTight owns the seminal patents for wireless intrusion prevention technology with 23 U.S. and international patents granted to date (UK, Australia Japan) and more than 20 additional patents pending. AirTight Networks is a privately held company based in Mountain View, CA.

AirTight Networks, the AirTight Networks logo, Cloud Services, Secure Wi-Fi and Marker Packet are trademarks; AirTight and SpectraGuard are registered trademarks of AirTight Networks, Inc.  All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE AirTight Networks