American Systems standardises on CounterACT for network visibility and access control

(17/09/2009)

ForeScout Technologies has announced that American Systems, an IT solutions provider, has standardised on CounterACT for network visibility and access control across its enterprise. With this announcement, American Systems joins ForeScout’s growing list of US customers.

American Systems is a federal contractor with clients such as the U.S. Navy; U.S. Army; Department of State; FAA, and others. With 17 office locations and 125 field sites, American Systems provides consulting services and IT support for federal government initiatives surrounding command, control, communications, intelligence, readiness, surveillance and national security. Given its federal focus and integration with sensitive government agencies, network security for American Systems’ employees and customers is a mission-critical priority.

“Protecting US federal infrastructure as a national security priority will soon become the corporate mandate of federal contractors nationwide,” said Brian Neely, Chief Technology Officer at American Systems. “As a trusted government contractor, American Systems continues to work ‘ahead of the security curve’ and adhere to the highest security standards, leveraging technologies such as ForeScout’s CounterACT to deter, prevent, detect, and defend against cyber attacks and eliminate network vulnerabilities.”

Wesley Ward, Information Security Manager at American Systems added: “CounterACT is an ideal NAC solution for our federal contractor network; it plugs into our heterogeneous infrastructure, enabling us to gain instant visibility and control of the network while leveraging our existing systems investment.”

“CounterACT’s multi-faceted alerting and reporting system has made it our solution of choice for WAN-wide compliance enforcement and training,” Ward continued. “For example, our corporate policy prohibits the use of public IM and P2P applications on corporate assets. CounterACT identifies vulnerable out-of-compliance clients, and remediates them.”

CounterACT has the ability to see and control every connected IP device down to the switch port. It provides complex policies to enable and enforce security processes and standards, performs access control without the need to first deploy 802.1x, and enforces actions such as peer-to-peer shutdown, post-connection monitoring for threat prevention, and detection/blocking of banned devices - such as USBs, where needed.

Since the original implementation, CounterACT has been used to automate the enforcement of corporate and government IT policy, automatically alerting end-users who are in violation of these use policies, informing them of the consequences and taking necessary action as deemed appropriate by the organisation to remove banned software, etc. CounterACT also combines clientless network access control (NAC) and signatureless intrusion prevention to ensure all connected and connecting devices are in compliance with network security policies and are free of self-propagating threats.

“In times such as these when cyber attacks such as those on the NYPD, Dalai Lama, Pentagon’s Joint Strike Fighter and the U.S. electrical grid are becoming a more regular occurrence, federal government agencies – and their suppliers – must adopt measures to improve enterprise network security,” said Gord Boyce, President of ForeScout.

“However, the rip-and-replacement of network infrastructure at the expense of American taxpayers is the last thing our government offices and agencies should do. As we have proven with the American Systems’ application, CounterACT can easily mesh into already existing, stabilised heterogeneous IT infrastructures thereby bringing immediate protection, enforcement and training value that is unsurpassed in the industry today.”

Related topics:  Network Security 

Print version | Email to a friend | Related articles

Data breaches: Trends, costs and best practices gives you all the latest information on securing personal and corporate data, key recommendations for immediate action to improve data security, and how to respond to data breaches.

Other Security news and resources