New Pandemic Readiness Solution From Virtela Helps Organizations Prepare for Unexpected Threats

DENVER, May 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Virtela, the secure network solutions company, today announced its new Pandemic Readiness Solution, which helps to ensure business continuity by enabling employees to securely access corporate resources remotely in the event of a pandemic. Customers using Virtela's solution can maintain their revenue streams by dynamically scaling network capacity to accommodate a large number of remote users without the expense of overbuilding their current networks.

(Editor's note: To view a Webinar entitled "Building Workforce Mobility for an Avian Flu Pandemic ... and Other Scenarios" go to http://www.virtela.net/resourcecenter_webcasts.html)

"As a solutions integrator, we have the infrastructure and expertise to integrate all the elements an organization needs to provide secure, dynamically scalable, remote access to corporate resources," said Kathy Lynch, senior product manager. "We take a consultative approach, working with customers to develop an end-to-end customized solution that leverages the existing network. We can add carrier and POP diversity, managed remote access, security, global load balancing, and creative capacity expansion options to avoid over-engineering customers' networks. This approach allows customers to minimize the cost of the IP infrastructure and staffing needed to respond to a pandemic or other disaster, while enabling them to rapidly scale remote access on a temporary basis."

There is little doubt that natural disasters or a global pandemic will strike in the future. The CDC has estimated that if there were a pandemic of the H5N1 Bird Flu, for example, as much as 40 percent of the workforce would be out at any one time. The CDC has developed mitigation strategies, such as voluntary or mandatory social distancing, that could last for days or even months. This would have disastrous financial implications for employees and organizations without available remote-access capabilities.

Authorities are thus stressing the importance of organizations developing pandemic plans that will allow them to keep functioning in the event of an emergency. An important part of that plan is ensuring adequate network capacity for all employees, contractors, and partners so they can work from home for weeks or possibly months. With Virtela's Pandemic Readiness Solutions, organizations can quickly scale remote access to accommodate thousands of telecommuters locally and globally, without sacrificing security. SSL VPNs provide flexibility needed during a pandemic situation, enabling end users to connect to corporate data centers, possibly with home PCs, kiosks, handheld devices, or other devices not sanctioned by the corporation. Virtela's solution ensures that these remote users are prevented from introducing malicious activity into the network and can also provide for restricted access based on user type, machine, login IP address, and applications running on the PCs.

During a pandemic scenario, social distancing may require that an office completely shut down for a while; however, the corporation may not consider all users to be essential during this time. Virtela can implement solutions that allow only critical users to have access to corporate resources. Another attribute of pandemics is that they affect many regions at the same time, so being able to intelligently balance users between data centers will be key to a successful solution.

"We're finding that businesses are requiring that a plan be in place to enable their employees to function with disruptions that are as minimal as possible," said Lynch. "Many organizations are realizing that their remote access planning is not sufficient for pandemics and other disasters or for compound disaster scenarios. And our customers are finding that procuring a service to protect their network assets and ensure the availability of remote access is far more efficient and cost-effective than trying to adequately fund an in-house overlay network and the associated IT staff needed to manage the influx of remote workers during a disaster scenario."

Elements of Pandemic Readiness

Virtela's Pandemic Readiness Solution incorporates the infrastructure, tools, and personnel necessary for disaster recovery. The service aggregates and integrates the best access and backbone infrastructures around the world into its Global Service Fabric via an intelligent architecture overlay of network nodes called Regional Policy Centers (RPCs). Virtela employs a variety of remote network access enablers for Pandemic Capacity Planning:

  *  Core security is provided by firewalls and intrusion prevention devices
     in RPCs.
  *  SSL VPN devices, installed quickly during a pandemic or disaster,
     terminate end-user connections.
  *  Global load-balancing manages sessions across all SSL VPN devices at
     gateways.
  *  Out-of-region access, which employs WAN acceleration devices, allows
     any user to gain quick and secure access, maximizes global capacity,
     accommodates high spikes in traffic, and provides unprecedented
     redundancy with hardware, regional gateways, and ISP and carrier
     access.
  *  Virtela provides the ability to assign different levels of remote
     access based on end-user attributes, allowing access to the most
     critical users even in dire circumstances.
  *  Emergency Licensing for SSL VPN hardware acts like an insurance policy,
     letting customers add new capacity immediately for temporary intervals,
     switching to permanent licenses later, if necessary.  To save costs,
     customers can turn the emergency capacity on or off as needed.
  *  Procurement of low-cost, minimally licensed SSL VPN devices that remain
     idle until the customer needs capacity, at which point the customer can
     purchase and activate standard licenses. During a pandemic, supply
     lines and purchasing will be stressed, so adding just software licenses
     is preferable to having to purchase hardware.
  *  Multiple global access points ensure that customers can incorporate all
     their locations into their Pandemic Capacity Plan.
  *  End-user support and exercising of business continuity plans makes sure
     that end users are prepared ahead of time and that resources are
     available as planned. Training and process development ensures proper
     network usability and process control from end to end.

  Virtela's Pandemic Readiness Solution is available now.

  About Virtela

Virtela Communications Inc. delivers award-winning network and security solutions to many of the world's largest and fastest-growing multinational companies. Currently serving customers across six continents, Virtela's network reach spans more than 190 countries. Virtela's unique Global Service Fabric (sm) offers the foundation for delivering critical applications via the company's acclaimed service methodology, with a services suite that includes IP-based virtual private networks (VPNs), security services, Voice over IP, Video over IP, and network consulting services.

Virtela is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, with a second Network Operations Center in Mumbai, India. Virtela is a member of Juniper Networks' (NASDAQ: JNPR) Managed Network Solutions Preferred Alliance Program. For more information, please call +1 (720) 475-4000 or visit http://www.virtela.net/.