• Great Bay's Beacon Endpoint Profiler solves Canadian city's endpoint discovery challenge prior to 802.1X deployment
GREENLAND, NH, Oct. 23, 2008 -- Great Bay Software, the innovator of Endpoint Profiling for enterprise networks, has partnered with the City of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, to assist in the network discovery phase of deploying Juniper's 802.1X security solution to protect its Water Treatment Facility network. Great Bay's flagship software product, Beacon Endpoint Profiler™, ensures a speedier, more accurate transition to an 802.1X environment by providing a real-time, contextual inventory of all appliances and ports, including non-Windows and non-NAC EAP devices. Further, the City of Greater Sudbury will rely on Beacon, post-802.1X deployment, for ongoing Endpoint Identity Monitoring of more than 30 remote sites within the Water Treatment Facility network and its city employee wireless network.
Due to more stringent regulations imposed by the province of Ontario, protecting the live data and infrastructure equipment that make up the City's Water Treatment Facility business unit was critical. Of particular concern for the City were its remote Water Treatment buildings across the municipalities -- more than 30 in all -- which were more challenging to manage because of their rural location and unmanned, automated status.
"We have had incidents in the past in which contractors inadvertently caused problems by plugging in unauthorized laptops at these remote sites, which are basically in the middle of nowhere," said Jim Dolson, manager of Hardware and Technology Applications, City of Greater Sudbury. "This type of activity can take down the entire Water Treatment network -- and if the network is down, the City requires attendants to man all of these remote sites, which drives up costs."
The City solicited Juniper to achieve their security goal, based on the strength of their UAC 802.1X solution. However, Dolson says his staff ran into some challenges in the network discovery phase of the project.
"Deploying 802.1X successfully meant that we needed to discover all non-intelligent, non-authenticating devices on our network -- even those with static MAC addresses," Dolson said. "The methods available to us were very convoluted and time consuming. That's when Juniper introduced us to Great Bay Software and their product, Beacon Endpoint Profiler."
Using Beacon, Dolson and his small IT support staff were able to significantly reduce the effort required to inventory all devices attached to the network. Within a matter of days -- as opposed to weeks using prior methods -- Dolson was able to locate, map and secure all non-intelligent devices on the Water Treatment Facility's network using the software's automated, pre-programmed templates that cover just about every possible network-attached device, including non-authenticating ones.
"The intelligence and additional features of Beacon made the process quick, painless and simple," Dolson said. "We are now able to roll out 802.1X to every single water treatment location across the network, even the most remote ones, keeping them protected and secure."
Today, Dolson says he is planning on utilizing Beacon as the City continues to roll out 802.1X on the employee wireless network. "Currently, we have completed the deployment in two of our larger facilities and will continue to roll it out in about 10 more," he said. "We remain impressed with the way Beacon and Juniper's 802.1X solution work together."
"Our goal with the Beacon Endpoint Profiler installation was to facilitate a comprehensive but fast and efficient 802.1X deployment for the customer," said Steve Pettit, president of Great Bay Software. "Municipalities everywhere are dealing with infrastructure security concerns, and we were pleased to be able to add value to this project at the City of Greater Sudbury."
Great Bay Software Inc. is a leading software development firm specializing in Enterprise Endpoint discovery, identity, and administration.
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