Portsys UK’s remote access appliance chosen to fight against pandemic threats

PortSys UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of Portcullis Systems, Inc. a US-based company and a Microsoft™ and HP™ partner offering solutions for secure remote access, announced today that Fareham College, a Further Education College offering a wide range of full and part time vocational and academic courses in South Hampshire, has chosen Portsys UK’s Secure Application Access Gateway appliance to bring remote access options to the college.

“With the swine flu and other pandemic threats on the horizon we felt it was critical to provide remote access to prevent closing and keep faculty and students connected while not compromising security of the network”, said IT Services Manager for Fareham College Jim Jackson. “We already have both academic and support staff up and running remotely and we plan to roll this out to all staff laptops within the next few months.”

Jackson says that the College wanted something they could be confident was secure, easy to maintain and wasn’t something that would make them vulnerable because of lack of understanding.

“The PortSys UK Secure Application Access Gateway integrated nicely with Swivel PINsafe and really fit with our budget,” said Jackson. “We needed something secure and knowing this appliance has Microsoft ISA 2006 behind it and Microsoft IAG 2007 on top of it, along with the Swivel authentication, this was affordable and really came together nicely for us.”

The PortSys UK’s Secure Application Access Gateway appliances enable customers to eliminate client-based VPN access by creating secure portals as the external interface to their internal networks. This enables any device with a web browser to establish secure access to applications using the SSL technology included in every web browser. Remote access is controlled for each user based on the organisation’s security and authentication policies, the type of device being used, the security posture of the user’s device and the location in which the end user is attempting to access the application. This enables access to be dynamically adjusted for users operating endpoints, including PCs, laptops, PDAs, and Internet kiosks.

“What really impressed us about this product was the flexibility that comes with it,” said Jackson. “We were able to use this for over a month and worked to get the systems to do everything we needed. We realised its value and that we had to have it.”