Secure Computing teams with Riverbed Technology

In phase one, the companies will jointly offer their solutions through select channel partners. Their complementary product portfolios are designed to allow organisations to increase application performance across the WAN while still maintaining secure Internet gateways.

The second phase will see Secure Computing’s firewall and reputation-based web filtering and antispam technology offered as a software module that can be run on the Riverbed Optimisation System (RiOS) services platform. The integration will extend the functionality of the companies' Steelhead hardware platform, claimed the vendor.

“With the emergence of Web 2.0, there’s been a dramatic increase in malware, requiring companies to thoroughly secure every connection to the Internet,” said Atri Chatterjee, senior vice president of marketing, Secure Computing. “Wrapping security into other required functionalities like WAN optimisation and simplifying their management is a concept we think customers will quickly embrace.”

Alan Saldich, vice president product marketing and alliances, Riverbed, said that increasing pressures on network traffic have created a need for both optimisation and protection.

“Companies have experienced rapid increases in network traffic as well as increases in file sizes and rich content, and that has negatively impacted the response times of business-critical applications. In addition to accelerating access to these applications, it is a logical extension to now enable third-party vendors, such as Secure Computing, to leverage Steelhead appliance deployments to offer best-of-breed solutions and services so our customers can reduce their costs, management headaches, and IT footprint.”

Secure Computing offers web security protection including anti spam and malware protection and reputation based URL filtering, while Riverbed’s wide-area data services include application acceleration, bandwidth optimisation and improved quality of service.