SCIENCE

Corrent Corp., the price/performance leader in network security, today announced that it has been awarded authorization to sell to U.S. federal government agencies under the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. The GSA schedule, a key federal government procurement vehicle, enables Corrent to more efficiently market its network security products to a wide variety of U.S. government agencies. Corrent markets a family of high-performance firewall/VPN security appliances that are extraordinarily effective at defending computer networks against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks each year account for billions of dollars in economic damage worldwide and are among the most serious threats to both private and government networks. In a typical DDoS attack, hundreds or even thousands of "zombie" computers that have been infected by a worm begin sending requests continuously to a "victim" site. The counterfeit requests quickly overwhelm the target network and choke off legitimate traffic, making the affected network unavailable. Corrent's security appliances use hardware acceleration to quickly drop malicious packets and free network bandwidth for legitimate traffic. Institutions that use Corrent security appliances are able to withstand massive DDoS attacks and continue operating their networks so that their services are never interrupted. While this capability is important for private enterprises, it is even more critical for government networks that deliver vital services to the public. Corrent security appliances also allow government agencies to implement high-capacity, very high-speed Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Because VPNs employ encryption for secure communication, a process that is very computationally intensive, hardware acceleration is critical for maximum throughput. Using the company's proprietary security processors, Corrent security appliances are able to deliver multi-gigabit line-rate throughput for VPN, regardless of packet size, and support up to 20,000 simultaneous VPN tunnels. By using a distributed processing architecture, Corrent appliances are able to maximize the speed of both VPN and firewall traffic without one causing a bottleneck in the other. "With our new GSA schedule and expanded reseller network, Corrent is now better equipped than ever to meet the specialized IT needs of federal government customers," said Richard Takahashi, president and CEO of Corrent. "We believe that our network security products will be very attractive to a broad range of government agencies, especially due to the increased focus on Homeland Security and the need to upgrade government networks to defend against emerging threats." Government agencies can purchase Corrent products online through GSA Advantage (www.gsaadvantage.gov) or through Corrent's nationwide network of value-added resellers.