Aruba OK for WFA, HIPAAAruba OK for WFA, HIPAA

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Aruba Wireless Networks today announced it has received Wi-Fi certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance for its Aruba 5000 wireless LAN switch and Aruba 52 dual-purpose 802.11 a+b access point. The Aruba 5000 becomes the first modular WLAN switch to receive Wi-Fi certification.

n addition, the Company said that its Wi-Fi switching products are the first to conform to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), a key requirement for health care providers and have passed initial European and Japanese conformance testing.

The dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrums) interoperability tests, performed by Agilent ICL, are compliant with the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA) Wi-Fi test plan document version 1.1a. The 802.11a and 802.11b dual-band interoperability tests are performed only if the access point (AP) simultaneously supports both 802.11a and 802.11b.

These Wi-Fi alliance tests, covering a large variety of switch and AP configurations, check to see if the device under test communicates properly with a representative cross-section of previously tested and certified Wi-Fi member devices. Aruba’s products were tested for interoperability with a variety of products from 3Com, Atheros, Agere, Cisco Systems, D-Link, Intel, Intersil, Lucent, Proxim and Symbol. The parameters configured for AP interoperability are RTS threshold, fragmentation, WEP, SSID, preamble mode, power save, channel and rate.

Wireless Standards Conformance for the Healthcare Industry

Ideal for protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of individual health information as it traverses electronic networks, Aruba’s wireless LAN switching is the first to conform to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) - letting healthcare administrators more easily meet HIPAA requirements. HIPAA outlines new security standards intended to protect an individual’s health information, while permitting the appropriate access and use of that information by health care providers, clearinghouses and heath plans.

The HIPAA standard mandates safeguards for the physical storage and maintenance, transmission and access to individual health information. Key criteria to HIPAA compliance include access control, authentication and advanced encryption.

HIPAA also requires “irrefutable” unique identification of authorized users and the rejection of unauthorized users. Aruba’s WLAN switching systems meet this requirement by supporting multi-factor authentication. Aruba’s Wi-Fi system is also able to uniquely classify, detect and destroy unauthorized or illegal rogue devices that appear on the wireless network.

Aruba’s Wi-Fi switches are the most secure means to provide 802.11 access within large-scale heathcare environments because they are the only to combine physical layer RF security with data link encryption, 802.1X authentication, network-layer tunneling and per user firewall policies.

Third-Party Interoperability

Aruba has successfully completed interoperability tests with its Aruba 5000 WLAN switch and the following third-party access points: Agere (AP-1000), Cisco (340, 350, 1100, 1200), Netgear (HE102, HE314, FM114P, MR814), Linksys (WAP 55AG, WAP 54G, WAP 11), D-Link (all models), Avaya (AP-3, AP-4, AP-5), Symbol (Spectrum24), Proxim (Orinoco AP 2000), Intermec (Mobilian), Buffalo (Airstation), Melcor (all models). With Cisco, any Wi-Fi compliant third-party AP, Aruba provides:

Aruba Wireless Networks

Wi-Fi Alliance