When evaluating other methodologies for remotely supporting enterprise software in high security environments, a simple litmus test should be the question:

"Was this solution designed for remote support of enterprise software, or was it designed for something else?"

Enexity was founded for the sole purpose of helping secure organizations enable highly secure, yet powerful ad-hoc network access. It's what we do better than anyone else.

Other solutions used today and a brief commentary relative to SecureLink VSN:

pcAnywhere - a fine software product for remotely supporting a PC, pcAnywhere is very similar to desktop sharing solutions, except is has the added liability of requiring a connection pipe, such as a modem or VPN account.

Modems - the former standard in remote support connectivity, modems are rapidly being phased out & should require no specific analysis. Modems are expensive to setup & maintain, are slow and typically must work in conjunction with another application (like pcAnywhere) for the remote user to get anything done. Audit is very limited and security vulnerabilities are significant since connections typically are originated from the outside. On the plus side, a modem can simply be unplugged!

Device monitoring solutions - some solutions designed to remotely monitor devices and servers have rudimentary remote control capabilities. These products may also incorporate features to push software fixes to remote devices. While excellent for remote monitoring of simple and standard devices (like ATM machines, cable modems or a PBXs), enterprise software tends to be more complex and customized to make monitoring and patch distribution realistic. Remote control capabilities of monitoring solutions are generally too crude to address the specific needs of enterprise software vendors and their security conscious customers.

Home-grown solutions - some software vendors have developed their own solutions for supporting their customers. Is this a business your software company wants to be in? For your customers, does your solution give the security, control and audit of a SecureLink VSN solution? See the feature chart below to decide.

• Designed for, and used today by over 10,000 highly secure and heavily regulated organizations
• Individual accounts for each support technician
• Each support technician authenticated on their own corporate network (ex: Active Directory, LDAP)
• Detailed audit trails (including files accessed, commands entered and services accessed) at the individual support technician level
• Access scheduling for specific hours of the day, days of the week (ex: only enable access Monday - Friday 8:30 - 5:00)
• One time access permission (ex: enable access for the next 2 hours only)
• Real time connection notifications delivered via e-mail, including reason for connecting and support ticket information
• No hardware or infrastructure required
• Granular access controls at the host and port level (ex: only enable read-only access to this log file directory)
• Real-time reporting and monitoring from anywhere inside your network
• Data export to syslog or other local reporting repository