Bradford Networks Announces Version 4.0 of Campus Manager and NAC Director

Bradford Networks announced today version 4.0 of its comprehensive network access control (NAC) solutions boasting a wide-ranging set of new functionality to increase security and enhance automation. The new release delivers expanded assessment options, increased operational flexibility, and more powerful systems management tools. Bradford is also adding fully redundant and high-performance appliances to its product line to meet the demands of larger and more complex environments, such as expanding wireless networks.Version 4.0 of Bradford's Campus Manager and NAC Director adds a persistent agent for Mac OS X to its broad family of persistent and dissolvable agents. It also expands agent scanning and ongoing monitoring capabilities to include detecting process activity, file presence/status, and wireless drivers with known vulnerabilities. These powerful assessment functions allows IT personnel to efficiently address computers running prohibited or unlicensed applications while also searching for specific files.

To help organizations automate security processes, version 4.0 integrates with leading patch management platforms, such as BigFix. The integration allows the automatic detection of the patch status of each computer on the network and automatically isolates non-compliant machines for mitigation.

"Network access control is a critical security process for the long term and enabling secure guest access and accelerating vulnerability mitigation are key NAC functions that show near-term return on investment," said John Pescatore, vice president, Gartner Inc. "Enterprises should focus on deploying NAC solutions that can quickly demonstrate immediate support for current business demands while providing a scalable platform for full-scale NAC in the future."

As organizations increasingly depend on wireless networks, additional security becomes mandatory. With this release, Bradford paves the way for its NAC solutions in wireless environments by supporting additional wireless devices and capabilities, such Cisco's Catalyst 3750 with integrated wireless controller and Aruba Networks's EAP offload feature.

"During the summer we added wireless access to 18 residence halls and therefore saw a huge increase in wireless usage. Campus Manager handled this expansion and our fall rush was the smoothest ever," said Ryan Laus, associate network manager, Central Michigan University, after testing Bradford's new high performance platform.

The new platform for Campus Manager and NAC Director features dual-processor appliances and optimized RADIUS software capabilities that double the maximum number of end users supported. The boosts in speed and power also address increased authentication demands from the exploding number of wireless networks deployed across industries like education and healthcare. For organizations wanting greater hardware-level redundancy, Bradford is also adding appliances with RAID 10 support and hot-swap, dual-power supplies.

"Organizations are looking to NAC to perform specific functions that provide a direct return on their technology investments," said Mike Gadoury, Bradford Networks founder and CEO. "As we are seeing in education and healthcare, the explosion of wireless networks is driving the adoption of NAC. Bradford's new release gives these organizations the tools to solve today's pressing access security issues."