Frontier to police network police

As important as network security is to an ISP or a telecom service provider, it often can overwhelm customers. In an effort to ease this burden and grow its business, Frontier Communications has teamed with Network Associates to provide managed security services.

"Our customers' IT resources are stretched thin, especially with e-commerce," said Mike Fuchua, vice president of connectivity services for Frontier.

Frontier's managed security services will be based on Network Associates' new security products. The Webshield E-ppliance product line, announced last week, melds McAfee anti-virus, Gauntlet firewall and PGP virtual private network software into a single plug-and-play appliance. Sun Microsystems will support Webshield E-ppliances on its Solaris/SPARC platform. Hewlett-Packard will use its own hardware running Windows NT.

>From its network operations center in Detroit, Frontier will manage >customer security platforms as a value-added service. "We'll manage their >system based on their comfort level," Fuchua said.

Services will include security auditing, policy establishment and maintenance.

Trials will start next month and service will be commercially available in the first quarter, said Brian Fink, vice president of products and systems for Frontier.

The WebShield E-ppliance platform and its managed services arrangement with Frontier will help Network Associates target the medium-sized market, said Zach Nelson, executive vice president of worldwide marketing and alliances for Network Associates. "Internet security is just starting to take off. I see a major ramp-up after Y2K."

By the first of the year, most clients will opt for the bundled solution and it will be "the future for every security application shipped by Network Associates," Nelson said. However, when referring to current stand-alone products he added, "We will sell [it] however our customers want it."