ASG brings access and control to U.S. market

ATLANTA--New Brunswick-based ASG Technologies introduced it Passwerks Network Access Control and Security suite to service providers in the U.S. this week and announced the general availability of Release 2.0. 

Passwerks consolidates and manages the access to a service provider’s network elements and provides increased security from a single access point. The solution also provides an audit trail and filtering of events to pinpoint when and who made configuration changes. 

“It's kind of an escorted access. Once a user is permitted in, it allows network managers to audit them while they are in the device,” said Mike O’Brien, vice president of marketing for ASG.  

In addition to a service provider’s internal users, market changes such as self-provisioning and self-service are increasing the need for a centralized network access control and security system, O’Brien said. “End users want access to their own services and that’s a real security issue. There is more pressure on service providers to allow access to people they normally wouldn’t allow,” he added. 

Internally, Passwerks is designed to increase the productivity of network operations personnel who would only need to remember a single password for all systems. This also reduces the proliferation of passwords outside the company and secures the interfaces of both serial and IP-based network devices. 

It is increasingly important as the industry moves to more distributed networks and consolidation of service providers occurs, O’Brien said.  

Passwerks is a carrier-grade solution that ASG will target at all kinds of carriers through OEM partners as well as system integrators. “We look at OEMs, OSS providers and system integrators as channel partners,” O’Brien said. The company also will market directly to service providers. 

The system allows an administrator to immediately and temporarily suspend the access of a user and it includes idle session termination. Passwerks also will support and run on top of existing security and authentication systems.  

Passwerks currently supports interoperability with various systems including Ericsson AXE & GSM switches, Lucent 5ESS & Octel Lucent) voice mail, Glenayre paging servers & Nortel Networks’ Passport and AccessNode. The Passwerks pricing model uses a right-to-use fee and is based on a per-element charge.  

“We continue to certify on more of devices on a daily basis,” O’Brien said. 

Passwerks has a modular software design that makes it easy to add features and functionality and for the development of customer-specific requirements or application scripts. 
Tim McElligott is senior editor for Telephony. He can be reached at tmcelligott@intertec.com.