10 February 2006

Opengear Unveils Secure Device Server Line

Opengear Inc., has announced the availability of its Opengear’s Secure Device Server line, offering secure access to a number of devices.

The SD4000-series devices are based on a Micrel KS8695P SoC.  The KS8695P is based on an ARM9 core clocked at 166MHz.

The SD4002 2-port unit and SD4008 8-port unit offer high level security together with an ability to control any device with an RS232/422/485 serial port or Ethernet interface, the company said.

“Management solutions that handle only text characters simply do not meet today’s need,” said Bob Waldie, CEO and Chairman of Opengear. “The modern machines have sophisticated embedded Windows or Linux operating systems, and they require sophisticated management tools that have graphical console management as well as text capabilities. The SD4000 is the only solution that offers secure local and remote VNC, Remote Desktop, HTTP and telnet access over the network or serial lines.”

Waldie added: “Control engineers who use old serial to Ethernet device server products that lack rigorous authentication, encryption and tunnelling unnecessarily put their enterprise security at risk.”

In addition to the ability to access, monitor and manage these devices both at the local site and over the Internet, Opengear is the only device server supplier to provide secure text and graphical console access through secure, low bandwidth VNC, HTTP and Windows Remote Desktop access, claims the company.

Using tunnelled VNC and Remote Desktop, Opengear’s SD4000 Secure Device Servers securely manage distributed Windows PCs and embedded PC devices, while it’s VNC-over-serial and RDP-over-serial functions enable remote access of PC appliances via RS422/485 lines. Leveraging the HTTP support, individuals can control both the network infrastructure (switches, firewalls) as well as other appliances (security and power switches.).

Both the SD4002 and SD4008 are configured for remote access via a dial-up modem, the Internet or at the local site through a local network or serial connection. Opengear said it places a priority on security with encrypted access to all remote applications by using 128-bit AES encryption. It also provide a variety of filtering, access logging and alerting capabilities including offline archived console logs and restricted IP address, password or account access.