SEATTLE -- F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV - News), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced a new release of its award-winning FirePass® Controller. The new version of F5's Secure Sockets Layer Virtual Private Network (SSL VPN) solution features enhanced integration with F5's BIG-IP® Application Traffic Management platform, establishing F5 as the only vendor in the industry that can unify and centralize security and access control for remote, wireless LAN (WLAN), and Local Area Network (LAN) users and scale to the performance requirements necessary to meet universal access throughput demands. The addition of extending the FirePass product's broad endpoint security within the WLAN and LAN infrastructure further hardens the security protections within an organization providing an efficient method of control.

"The fundamental problem for most organizations is that they are currently required to define and manage secure user access at too many points and products within the network for the same users," said Erik Giesa, VP of Product Management and Marketing at F5 Networks. "For remote access, an organization will configure and administer policies on the SSL VPN for their users. For WLAN access they will have to configure and administer policies on the WLAN switch for the same users. For LAN access they'll administer and control policies on the LAN switch, again for the same users. Not only is this inefficient, but the complexity of the situation lends itself to unintentionally creating security holes and actually prevents many organizations from deploying WLANs and broad remote access. F5 takes it even further by extending our comprehensive endpoint security checks to all devices regardless of where and how a user is accessing the network."

With this FirePass release, F5 has made a market-defining move by enabling an organization to define end-users' access policies and endpoint security in just one place: on the FirePass Controller. This reduces the costs of administration by eliminating the need to set up and maintain Access Control Lists (ACLs) on multiple LAN switches, SSL VPN appliances, and separate wireless LAN switches. With FirePass, a user's access method is supported whether they happen to be accessing the network remotely, on the wireless LAN, or even when directly connected to the LAN. In addition, FirePass' comprehensive endpoint security can be enforced for all users accessing the network, not just for remote users. This new secure universal access is enabled through the integration of the BIG-IP and FirePass products. The new version also includes features designed to significantly streamline policy definition, management and troubleshooting, so enterprises can cost-effectively support a virtually unlimited number of users.

F5 Networks Inc.