Celestix Technical Training - Microsoft UAG & TMG

Celestix will be giving training in Microsoft UAG and TMG (which will replace Microsoft IAG and ISA server) on the 3rd February.

If you are a reseller based in the UK and this is of interest, please register here

Websense V10000 - Web Security Appliance

Most people are aware that Websense are a market leader in the web filtering market, but tradionally has only been a software only option.

The software can either filter via a network sniffer (via a mirror or span port on a switch) or integrated with another solution such as a Cisco firewall or Microsoft ISA server.

The software has some limitations or lacked features that were being demanded from an enterprise perspective. These were addressed with Websense Security Gateway, which gave the following features:

• Web proxy server
• Integrated anti-virus solution
• Real time content classification
• Real time security scanning

This brought other considerations, due to the nature of this software, it would only be supported on a Linux platform. At the time I spoke with a number of customers who were put off by this, as they only had Windows administrators, and did not have the capacity to support a Linux server.

Websense took this onboard, and developed the V10000 appliance, which is a Websense branded appliance, which runs a Linux operating system and runs the Websense Security Gateway software within a virtualised environment. The specification of the hardware, will allow the appliance to run the Email Security and Data Security features in the future as well.

In short, Websense have produced an enterprise class proxy server, with enterprise web security in an appliance form factor.

At e92plus, we are technically proficient with the Websense range, where we not only carry out web demonstrations, deal with presales questions, deliver proof of concept deployments, architect and deploy full solutions, we also deliver both bespoke and certified Websense training.

SecurityPlus - IT Security Newsletter from e92plus

As you may know I work for e92plus, an IT Security Distributor based in the UK.

Richard Hicks of Celestix Networks and a Microsoft MVP wrote an interesting article about re-perimeterisation for our newsletter.

We are very grateful to Richard Hicks and Celestix for their continued support.

The article can be found here: SecurityPlus from e92plus

BETT 2010 - London Olympia 13th to 16th January

BETT is an educational technical show that is based in London.

This year we have two of e92plus' vendors at the show, Xirrus (innovative wireless solution) and NComputing (cost effective desktop virtualisation)

I will post more detailed information about each of these vendors later.

More information about the show is available here: BETT 2010

Barracuda EMEA Partner Conference & Barracuda Backup Service

I returned from Prague inspired with the Barracuda philosophy, as well as getting a better insight into the existing product range, and new products and features.

It was great to meet the senior management team of Barracuda, and meet people so driven and inspired by them.

It was also a good opportunity to meet existing e92plus resellers and our Dutch work colleagues from e92plus NL, as well as meet other resellers from around EMEA. It was good to meet Keith, who recognised me from this blog!

The product the caused the most buzz at the conference was the new Barracuda Backup Service.

Using a Barracuda appliance and software agents, you will be able to back up the servers within your organisation. This will obviously give a great alternative to existing tape back ups, but easy restoration and aaccessibility to your data as the appliance is onsite.

Obviously, you will say, what if something were to happen to the building, datacentre, appliance, etc, well the other component of the service is an offsite back solution. Previously this service was only available in the States, but due to some data laws within Europe, the data should not be store outsite of certain countries or Europe. The new datacentres for this European wide launch of this solution will be based in the UK, with new datacentres opening around Europe as and when.

This will allow data to be backed up onsite and allow quick restoration. In a DR situation, the data can be restore from the datacentres. You are able to select which data is sent offsite, so you are able to stop certain data from leaving your organisation.

More detailed information on the Barracuda website regarding the Barracuda Backup Service

The product is officially being launched on the 14th October at Storage Expo 2009 , and e92plus are holding sales training on 23rd October

How much is the service, well aside from the appliance and subscription cost, the offsite data storage is purchased in 100GB chunks, at only....... €69 per month per 100GB!!!

Work out the cost of your existing tape solution, and the savings will become obvious.

Wanted: ISA & IAG Technical Consultant / Engineer - South East UK

At e92plus, we are looking for a Celestix Engineer, where the focus will be to carry out web demos, presales, architecture, deployment and some support for the Celestix product range.

The range currently includes the Celestix MSA (Microsoft ISA appliance), Celestix WSA (Microsoft IAG SSL-VPN appliance), Celestix Load Balancer (Linux based load balancer) and Celestix HOTPin (Celestix's own two factor authentication solution). As a number of the deployments from e92plus are Websense Web Filter/Web Security integrated with ISA server, there will be a requirements to understand that as well.

Previously this role was covered by me, which was fine when we had a lower volume of calls, but as the Technical Manager, I have a number of other tasks to cover as well. The idea is to remove the day-to-day Celestix requirement from me and have a dedicated engineer. Obviously I'll be there to as a back up and mentor whoever takes on this role.

For those interested, here is the job description

Feel free to contact me on the blog address, if you are interested in this role, or have any questions.