Product: Version 2.0
Family: EpiForce Network Security Software
Vendor: Apani Networks, Inc.

Product Description: EpiForce 2.0 maintains security for data-in-motion within the network perimeter from an insider attack, and protecting the sensitive data carried across your network. EpiForce 2.0 acts as a regulatory compliance security management system that automatically implements and enforces network security relationships and the access control to ensure network security and establishes an audit trail on the implementation of security relationships including what they are, when they were established, if they are modified and a guarantee that they have been enforced EpiForce 2.0 logically divides your network into security zones to automatically configure and enforce your unique security relationships between each non-public network device from a central management console, simplifying administration and reducing management costs.

Performance Testing: Apani has invested more than three years of R&D into the creation of EpiForce and the results of the development were recently proven in scalability testing. EpiForce passed five different test cases in a network of 10,000 computers. The benchmark scalability tests, commissioned by Apani and conducted in the presence of an Apani customer, were completed by VeriTest, the independent testing division of Lionbridge, to verify how EpiForce performs in a large scale environment. The VeriTest study reported that EpiForce not only passed all of the scalability tests, but in doing so, the CPU utilization at no time exceeded 25 percent while memory utilization never exceeded 15 percent of committed RAM. VeriTest also reported no abnormality in network bandwidth utilization during any of the tests. The VeriTest study used a test bed comprised of:

• 10,000 Agents
• 5 Managers
• 2 Service Administrators
• 2 Administrative Consoles
• 1 Oracle Database
• 1 Network Packet Analyzer
• 1 Time Server/Script executive system.

The VeriTest study validated EpiForce’s ability to support a 10,000 Agent test environment and collected network throughput measurements at the Admin Consoles, the Managers, the Admin Servers and the Database Server. The benchmarking, performance and scalability study for EpiForce was modeled based on real world environments and helps customers ascertain how the product will perform in their network

Given the excellent system performance at 10,000 Agents (less than 25 percent CPU utilization and less than 15 percent Memory utilization), Apani Networks, together with their customer, continued to add additional simulated agents while continuing to test and were able to increase the environment to more than 30,000 agents, before the system performance slowed to unacceptable limits.

Interfaces: EpiForce is architected to deliver enterprise class performance featuring multi-threaded architecture, fault tolerance, massive scalability and plug-in interface architecture to enable the integration of new value-added components as well as compatibility with legacy systems. Apani Networks’ EpiForce secures data-in-motion within the network perimeter, provides machine-level access control, and is easily deployed and administered throughout large networks across multiple platforms. More importantly, by functioning at the network layer, this security technology enables a ubiquitous deployment of security policies throughout the enterprise without the displacement of existing networking equipment.

Apani’s EpiForce was engineered to be combined with your existing perimeter-based security defenses to deliver a robust, comprehensive and centralized network security management solution that satisfies IT security requirements necessary for regulatory compliance.

Administration Server

The Administration Server acts as the liaison between the Universal Agents and the data base, confirming security policies, and as a full certificate authority: issuing, revoking and expiring certificates. It may reside on a dedicated machine or with other components or other processes. Multiple servers may be utilized to support the scalability necessary for large-scale deployments.

Administrator Console

The Administrator Console offers an enterprise-wide view of the entire EpiForce system, managing the security relationships between each Universal Agent and its assigned network device. The Admin Console creates and edits security policies for each Agent or groups of Agents, provides certificates for host authentication and maintains these relationships within a database store. Managed attributes include encryption levels, data integrity protection, data compression and anti-replay protection. The Administrator Console interoperates with popular databases and has a fail-over capability.

Universal Agent

EpiForce’s software Agents are universal, OS-agnostic and enforce network layer protection right at the point of packet creation. This ensures security rules will be executed according to the administrator-defined security policy. For legacy computers or other IP devices (printer, fax, etc.), the universal hardware Agent may be deployed as a “bump-in-the-wire”, or stand alone appliance, maintaining the same level of protection as the software agent.

Database Store

May be deployed on Oracle or MySQL platforms; multiple data store backups may be incorporated for load-sharing or fail-over capability.

Key Features & Benefits:

Comprehensive Security Design - Encrypts all network traffic traveling to and from non-public networked devices to address IT security components of regulatory compliance. Automatically audits and enforces network security relationships providing dynamic access control to protect and secure data-in-motion.

Global Enterprise Scalability - Tiered administrative design is flexible and scalable, supporting multiple security zones, managed centrally or locally. The modular system architecture enables multiple deployment schemes for consoles, administrative servers and agents to meet the stringent and unique needs of global enterprises or large government installations.

Ease of Implementation - Universal software Agents are automatically installed, run transparently to the end-user and may be deployed over most operating systems. Security zones provide custom policies for multiple user groups; zone policy changes are automatically configured to each impacted Agent. Administration consoles have fail-over capability to maintain security if a loss of connectivity occurs.

Central Management Interface - EpiForce includes a central management infrastructure through which security zones may be flexibly created and modified. These zones elegantly manage access to network devices according to your unique security policies.

Flexibility to Secure Entire Network - EpiForce was designed to work with any operating system or existing legacy system within your network core. Available as software or as a free-standing appliance, EpiForce may be deployed anywhere to protect any device, to provide comprehensive protection for your sensitive customer data.

Highlights: Before considering the implementation of a Web blocking or content filtering software, organizations must first decide what the driving force is behind the deployment. Is it to limit time spent on non-working activities? Or, is it to enhance the security posture of the network infrastructure. Quite often, visiting 'non-business' related websites can present security issues where spyware or other key-logging software may be unknowingly downloaded as part of the employee’s web-visiting experience.

For those organizations seeking to enhance their network security against an internal attack, the encryption of sensitive data while in motion within the network perimeter is critical. Further, adding access control completes the picture by establishing a comprehensive approach to securing inside the perimeter.

Apani's EpiForce provides this protection by encrypting internal data traffic and applying security policies through a single, centrally managed interface, where policies can be added or deleted in real-time. Machine level access control is an included component which enables one deployment of EpiForce to provide a transparent security layer, unseen by the end user.

End-Users: Large enterprise environments in government, healthcare and financial services networks.