News

Funk Software Adds Traction to Steel-Belted Radius with Linux

• By Kathleen Ohlson
• August 1, 2005

Funk Software yesterday announced its Steel-Belted Radius, a RADIUS/AAA server that centrally manages network access, will now run SuSE Enterprise Server 9 and Red Hat (Enterprise and Advanced Server 3) versions of Linux.

RADIUS is an IETF security management protocol that enables remote access servers to communicate with a central server to authenticate dial-in users and authorize their access to a requested system or service. Steel-Belted Radius supports proxy RADIUS, including forwarding proxy RADIUS requests to other RADIUS servers, acting as a target server processing requests from other RADIUS servers, and passing account information to a target server—either the one performing the authentication or an alternative.

Steel-Belted Radius 5.05 allows administrators to centrally manage users connecting through VPN, WLAN and 802.1x, controlling their access to the network regardless of how they enter it. The server validates users’ login credentials against a central security database. When a new connection is made, Steel-Belted Radius provides information to the network access device, such as what IP address to use, session time-limit information or which type of tunnel to set up. It logs all connections, including user names and connection duration, for tracking and billing.

The server validates information through a variety of methods, including Windows Active Directory, SQL, JDBC- and ODBC-compliant databases, LDAP directories such as Novell eDirectory, and token systems such as RSA Authentication Manager and CryptoCard. It runs on Windows, Solaris and Linux, and is compliant with the IEEE security standard 802.1x and WLAN protocols such as EAP-TTLS, EAP-PEAP, EAP-TLS and LEAP.

Steel-Belted Radius on Linux is currently in beta, and is expected to be available in September. Pricing is $4,995 per server for the Enterprise Edition, $12,000 per server for the Global Enterprise Edition, and $22,000 per server for the Server Provider Edition.