BOSTON, April 25, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Integration Partners www.integrationpartners.com an award winning network solutions provider has introduced CERTAINTY, enabling solutions which nurture intelligent and flexible support to solve business challenges and offer a path to cloud computing.

“The new service is uniquely designed to give customers a complement of program features which directly market to a customer’s business constituents the value of information technology services while increasing productivity and reduced costs. CERTAINTY solutions offer a customer the control on the quality and outcomes they desire with the ability to personally select the amount of support they need,” said Michael Ciano, Head of Managed Services at Integration Partners.

“Customers want to eliminate capital costs and increase their business efficiency in order to stay competitive. Our differentiator is a service that’s dynamic and scalable. Based on a collaborative effort with our customer base we have designed a service around the customer’s strategy and pace.”

Ensuring the successful support of advanced technologies is critical to maintaining customer confidence and satisfaction with their networks. A fully customizable solution, CERTAINTY enables customers to focus on running their business while the network is running at peak performance levels.

Gartner has published their 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls. Key points outlined in the report include:

• Palo Alto Networks was recognized as a leader.
• According to Gartner, vendors in the leaders quadrant “lead the market in offering new safeguarding features, providing expert capability, rather than treating the firewall as a commodity, and having a good track record of avoiding vulnerabilities in their security products.”
• According to Gartner, “The enterprise network firewall market is undergoing a period of dynamic evolution, as effective next-generation firewalls are now increasingly necessary. Vendors that have addressed advanced targeted threats have seen gains in the market.”

Avaya Flare Communicator provides employees and their companies with the following capabilities and benefits: 

• View the availability of enterprise associates from the contacts card and simply tap a single location to launch an instant message (IM), voice call or email
• Manage two simultaneous voice calls using the iPad while mobile
• Multi-task on the iPad tablet while communicating, e.g. read email, attend a web conference and use the iPad browser, and attend a voice conference call and IM, or use other productivity applications
• Search the corporate directory and add associates to the Avaya Flare Communicator contacts fan for easy access
• Engage in secure communication and collaboration remotely using wi-fi hotspots or 3G connectivity
• Reduce mobile expenses by using the data channel and avoiding roaming charges while traveling across different cellular networks

DOWNLOAD HERE:  http://bit.ly/rLU0tG

Integration Partners accepts award from the global Juniper Networks Partner Conference.  Integration Partners is the 2011 Juniper Networks Eastern Region Partner of the Year.

Integration Partners wins 2011 Juniper Networks Eastern Region Partner of the Year Award!

Call agents are very familiar with borders controllers. These devices control the call admissions to the network at the border of that network to help regulate the amount of calls where an agent is working. Session Border Controllers are Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) devices, which can also perform many other necessary call control functions.

There are two main parts to a session border controller; the signaling and the media functions.

The signaling function of the session border controller controls access to the base of the network and can maneuver the details of the message. The media function of the session border controller controls access to the media bundles and obstructs any chance at theft.

A “session” is any real-time voice, video, presence, instant messaging or multimedia collaboration session using IP session-layer signaling protocols, such as SIP or H.323.

The “border” is any IP-IP network border and the “control” functions satisfy critical enterprise requirements in five major areas:

• Security—A Net-Net SBC secures the SIP/H.323 trunking border to service provider IP networks for PSTN/IP termination and hosted services, and the Internet border to remote offices, teleworkers and mobile employees. In extremely security-conscious organizations, a Net-Net SBC even secures the enterprise data center with mission-critical IP PBX or UC server resources where it connects to the private VPN connecting other sites and “untrusted” employees.
• Service reach maximization—The SIP and H.323 interworking capabilities of a Net-Net SBC ensure interoperability with-and-between IP endpoints, IP trunking services, hosted IP services, IP PBXs and UC servers.
• SLA assurance—A Net-Net SBC controls session admission, bandwidth utilization, IP PBX or UC server loads and overloads, IP network transport and SIP/H.323 session routing. Appropriately deployed, Net-Net SBCs provide a range of high-availability options ranging from disaster recovery for business-critical major sites to basic survivability for smaller sites.
• Regulatory compliance—Encryption for session privacy, call/session replication for recording and prioritized session control for E911 calls are supported by a Net-Net SBC.
• Cost management—A Net-Net SBC enables least cost routing and session/call accounting, and it enforces service authorization and polices bandwidth use.

Session Border Controllers also act as a firewall, preventing customers or other providers from learning the specific details about how the network is constructed or how the calls are routed.  Session Border Controllers can either be centralized or distributed depending on the company’s needs.

For countless companies, Hurricane Irene provided a chance for IT firms to test the effectiveness of their disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

First and foremost, companies needed to ensure continuous data center services, and preliminary evidence seems to indicate they succeeded.  The centers themselves were well-protected from the elements; many, for example, are designed with raised floors to minimize flood damage.  At the same time, plans to back-up data offsite went off without a hitch.  As a result, a majority of east coast data centers operated seamlessly, without any major disruption to customers.

The only major bit of disconcerting news comes from Vermont, where serious flooding affected the state’s website and damaged hardware.

Disaster preparedness and recovery is, of course, predicated on the sound execution of technology to enable data back-up and replication.  However, many companies experience the most severe failure points in the areas of process management.  For example, companies may fail to institute a coherent chain of command to enable quick decision-making.  They may also fail to prioritize the data that may be at risk, taking a costly “one-size fits all” approach.

It is often the goal for companies large and small, from large pharmaceuticals to your local insurance broker, to protect your data from outside threats.

But what about the potential threats from the inside? A recent article in Information Week related the story of Jason Cornish a disgruntled employee from the pharmaceutical firm Shionogi. Mr. Cornish was able to access the data center and delete $800,000 worth of documents and files.

The motivation for the attack was one that in today’s environment has become increasingly common: Revenge for layoffs of colleagues and friends.

There are many techniques you can use that can help minimize the security risk of insider attacks. The first and simplest solution is to disable ex-employees’ accounts. This step alone could have saved Shionogi hundreds of thousands in damages as Mr. Cornish had resigned a few months before the attack.

Businesses need to be reminded of the importance of reviewing what users have access to your systems, and that changing passwords and resetting access rights is essential when a member of your staff leaves your employment,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos

You must also have in place a disaster recovery plan so that any damage is minimized by your ability to react. Sometimes it is hard to plan for these worst case scenarios but the repercussions of not are far too great to be ignored.

There are three areas of difference – security functions, operations, and performance. The security functional elements correspond to the efficacy of the security controls, and the ability for enterprises to manage risk associated with network traffic. From an operations perspective, the big question is, “where does application policy live, and how hard or complex is it to manage?” The performance difference is simple: can the firewall do what it’s supposed to do at the throughput it’s supposed to do it?   The Ten Things Your Next (Generation) Firewall Must Do are:

1. Identify and control applications on any port.
2. Identify and control circumventor.
3. Decrypt outbound SSL.
4. Provide application function control.
5. Scan for viruses and malware in allowed collaborative applications.
6. Deal with unknown traffic by policy.
7. Identify and control applications sharing the same connection.
8. Enable the same application visibility and control for remote users.
9. Make network security simpler , not more complex with the addition of application control.
10. Deliver the same throughput and performance with application control active

Users continue to adopt new applications and technologies – and the threats carried by them. In some organizations, obstructing the adoption of new technologies can be a career-limiting move. Even when it isn’t, applications are how employees get their jobs done, or maintain productivity in the face of competing personal and professional priorities. Because of this, safe enablement is increasingly the correct policy stance. But to safely enable these applications and technologies, and the business that rides atop them, network security teams need to put in place the appropriate policies governing use, but also controls capable of enforcing them. The ten things listed here are critical capabilities for putting the necessary controls in place – especially in the face of a more varied and rich application and threat landscape. Without the network security infrastructure to cope with that variety and depth, security teams cannot safely enable the necessary applications and manage risk for their enterprises

Juniper Networks today announced a unique service offered from their Junosphere cloud.  Junosphere Classroom enables you to cost-effectively educate students, and employees, on the Junos OS, routing protocols, and networking in general.

The Junosphere Classroom allows you to create virtual networking labs that provide students with full hands-on access to Juniper’s state-of-the-art commercial networking technology, without the expense of building or maintaining your own physical lab.  This cloud based service highlights Juniper’s push further into a software based business model and also promotes their single JUNOS operating system strategy across every facet of the network.

Junosphere Classroom offers a range of flexible, on-demand or onetime payment options that enable you to rapidly scale resources and costs up or down based on your needs.