AirTight Awarded Patent on Robust Location Tracking Technology

U.S. Patent Is the Seventh Granted to AirTight

Mountain View, CA, July 28, 2008 – AirTight® Networks, the leading provider of wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPS) and wireless vulnerability management, announced today that it has been awarded another U.S. patent, number 7,406,320, by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The patent covers robust location tracking technology for applications such as wireless intrusion prevention systems and asset tracking for WiFi networks. AirTight now has a total of seven U.S. patents and one Australian patent. It has more than 25 U.S. and international patents pending, many of which are undergoing active examination at patent offices of various countries and are expected to be granted this year.

AirTight’s location tracking technology is based on a predictive approach and takes into account the intrinsic uncertainties of  a wireless environment arising out of factors such as incomplete specification of RF space, variability of device RF characteristics and the dynamic nature of a wireless environment while performing location computations. It provides robust location tracking with high accuracy even in light of the above factors. The technology requires minimal deployment overhead as it does not require extensive calibration or site-surveys to achieve desired location tracking performance.

“While the theory of location tracking using triangulation has been around for a few years, making it work in real-life, indoor environments for critical applications such as security and asset tracking has remained a challenge,” said Dr. Hemant Chaskar, director of technology at AirTight. “AirTight has overcome this challenge through research and innovations to deliver powerful and cost effective location tracking technology for WiFi applications.”

Good location tracking requires certain density of received signal strength indicator (RSSI) measurement points. Because AirTight provides for integration of its WIPS with Cisco’s WLC (Wireless LAN Controller) the signal strength measurements of Cisco APs can be used along with those of AirTight’s sensors for location tracking purposes. The combined RSSI measurements are processed in AirTight’s location tracking engine. In this way, infrastructure AP hardware can be used to complement WIPS sensors to achieve the required density of RSSI measurement points. At the same time customers obtain the benefits of AirTight’s robust location tracking engine.

About Airtight’s Products

The AirTight SpectraGuard® solution family has achieved industry leadership based on patented technology that blocks wireless threats immediately and automatically, locates wireless devices and events with pinpoint precision and eliminates the false alarms that plague busy network operations and IT professionals.

Both its onsite WIPS product, SpectraGuard Enterprise and its recently introduced SaaS vulnerability management service, SpectraGuard Online, are ’lean back’ solutions providing easy deployment and automated scanning and reporting with little human intervention.

AirTight is the only WIPS vendor to receive a second consecutive “Positive” rating by Gartner in its recent MarketScope and its products have consistently outperformed its competitors in other head-to-head, in-depth evaluations (including Tolly and Information Security). Recent magazine reviews have awarded five stars to SpectraGuard Enterprise and praised it as “a wireless security solution that’s easy to deploy, elegantly simple and frighteningly effective,” and “a unique wireless security solution that can automatically classify and control access points (APs) and wireless clients.”

AirTight’s Patent Portfolio

AirTight invented and delivered the first comprehensive WIPS in the industry and pioneered autoclassification which eliminates the need for manual methods of base-lining wireless security which are expensive, error prone, hard to sustain and not scalable. AirTight received a patent on its WIPS invention in the United States, the 7,002,943 patent. Last year, the USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) ruled in favor of AirTight Networks and its U.S. Patent No. 7,002,943 in an interference action provoked by competitor, AirDefense.

Complete information about AirTight’s IP portfolio can be found at Patents page.

About AirTight Networks
AirTight Networks is the global leader in wireless security and compliance solutions. AirTight's patented technology protects enterprises from the growing problem of Wi-Fi security threats, while allowing organizations to better manage their WLAN environment and comply with emerging wireless compliance standards (i.e. PCI). The Company's award-winning SpectraGuard wireless intrusion prevention solution (WIPS) family provides enterprise security and compliance professionals with unparalleled capabilities to accurately detect, classify, block and locate all Wi-Fi security threats, while helping network operations staff to quickly monitor and troubleshoot WLAN performance issues. AirTight's pioneering Cloud Services family of cloud-hosted subscription services delivers the world's first and only "No Capex" multitenant WIPS, PCI wireless compliance and controller-less WLAN access solutions all in a single device.

AirTight's award-winning solutions are used by customers globally in the government, financial, retail, hospitality, telecom, technology, manufacturing, transportation, healthcare and education sectors AirTight owns the seminal patents for wireless intrusion prevention technology with 23 U.S. and international patents granted to date (UK, Australia Japan) and more than 20 additional patents pending. AirTight Networks is a privately held company based in Mountain View, CA.

Media Contacts:
Della Lowe
AirTight Networks
Tel: +1 (650) 934 8191
della.lowe@airtightnetworks.com