Sun VPN-on-demand secures mobile iappliance access

By Bernard Cole
iApplianceWeb
(10/26/02, 08:14:37 PM EDT)

Santa Clara, Ca. -- Looking to provide an alternative to exisitng solutions for providing VPN acess and security, Sun Microsystem Inc.'s has introduced ints Sun ONE Portal Server Secure Remote Access 6 solution.

Using a standard Web browser, users can securely access their portal (personalized and aggregated applications, data, Web services and legacy information) from any location such as an Internet café, airport or home.

User authentication for access to internal corporate network resources is handled over an encrypted channel between the Web browser and the portal. Authentication is then proxied by the gateway using the Sun ONE Identity Server to request and confirm authentication of the user.

As portals have become widely adopted, customers increasingly want to extend their portal initiatives to their partners and remote or mobile employees. However, existing VPN, reverse proxy and stand-alone identity management solutions are costly and require additional maintenance. The Sun solution significantly reduces the time and cost of deployment while providing the scalability, high availability, reliability and performance that enterprises and service providers require. Customers can securely extend their portal to their business partners and provide more mobility to their employees.

"A portal is only as useful as its reach, so a secure, trusted portal infrastructure that enables transactions across multiple defined audiences, via the device of their choice, highly elevates the business value of a portal," said Dana Gardner, research director at The Aberdeen Group.

The Sun ONE Portal Server provides security and authentication -- user policy, single sign on, and a management console -- and serves as the centralized policy server for customer deployments. This functionality centralizes the security of companies' Web applications, legacy and portals assets.

It uses standards-based privacy, security and authentication such as SSL/TLS and cryptographic algorithms such as 3DES/AES to help ensure all communications through the Internet are delivered safely and securely to the server and the client.

The Sun ONE Portal Server is priced per CPU at $57,000 per CPU. Available by the end of the year, it includes a two (2) CPU license for $95,000. Additional CPUs of Sun ONE Portal Server, Secure Remote Access 6 are available for $47,500 per CPU.

For more information about this product, go to www.sun.com.

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