Interactive Ideas launches Athena Security’s newest product The Change Advisor to the UK Market

Dec. 13, 2011 - PRLog -- London – Interactive Ideas are launching Athena Security’s newest product, Change Advisor. Ideal for network staff to test proposed changes to firewall configurations, the Change Advisor helps simplify and streamline the change process by analysing the impact of change up front and making it available to different stakeholders as and when they need it.

Athena’s new Change Advisor includes a simulated network test that predicts how packets would traverse the network based on connectivity, routing and the firewall devices involved in the change request.  Change Advisor notifies the requester if the change is already covered by existing policies, and if not, that it is ready to be submitted to the firewall engineer for review. It creates synthetic network traffic to test the impact of change before you implement it.

“Every company has defined a change process which reflects its unique mix of business requirements and access to expertise. The common theme across all of these companies is the realization that maintaining the shortest possible change cycle means considering some questions upfront”, says Anjali Gurnani, VP Product Marketing at Athena Security.  “Network managers will see a significant reduction in the cost of firewall management with this solution.”

Key advantages of the system are:

•   Eliminates unnecessary and incorrect change requests to firewall engineers
•   Provides application specialists and helpdesk staff a simple interface for checking whether a change needs to be implemented
•   Operational data is exposed only to authorised firewall engineers involved in the change process
•   Firewall engineers are shown exactly where changes are to be made if the service needs to be added

Adam Nash, Athena Product Manager at Interactive Ideas commented “The initial feedback from partners has been really positive. This product fits easily into managed service offerings and immediately adds value”

The Change Advisor is available immediately as an add-on component to a standard FirePAC installation or as a standalone product.  Pricing starts at £4000 and a free 60-day trial for an unlimited number of devices is available from http://www.athenasecurity.net.

About Interactive Ideas:

Interactive Ideas is a leading value-added distributor of Software and Technology products, establishing themselves in the competitive IT industry by providing excellent customer service, proactively working with their partners and being able to identify emerging technologies.

Structured into two divisions; The software solutions team works with resellers, ISV’s and systems integrators to provide software solutions, licensing and enterprise Linux. Providing value-added services to support the channel in delivering cost saving and innovative solutions to their customers. The retail team offers a specialist service dedicated to online retailers, providing them the value added services their business requires and vendors need to maximise sales through the online retail channel.

Learn more: http://www.interactiveideas.com
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About Athena Security:

In a world where controlling technology costs are paramount, Athena is the only solution provider to offer enterprise firewall analytics and remediation in a collection of focused tools. Customers configure Athena FirePAC towards requirements that are specifically operations, security or compliance oriented and pay only for what is needed. With a global customer base of several hundred Banking, Insurance, Retail, Healthcare, Energy, Utilities and US Federal Sector enterprises and thousands of users across a suite of products, Athena is constantly innovating the range of solutions it offers to drive more intelligent firewall and network management. From data center migration to policy optimization, Athena aims to be the most affordable and flexible choice for network and security engineers. For more information see http://www.athenasecurity.net