AirTight Receives U.S. Patent for Its Unique Technology to Counter Wireless DoS Attacks

AirTight now has total of 10 U.S., 1 Australian and 1 UK granted patents, and more than 25 pending patents

Mountain View, CA - May 18, 2009 - AirTight^® Networks, the global leader in wireless security and compliance solutions, today announced that it has been granted a U.S. patent number 7,496,094 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for its unique technology to counter wireless denial of service (DoS) attacks.

802.11 wireless networks (WiFi) are vulnerable to many types of layer-2 DoS attacks. These attacks cause disruption to the operation of WiFi and can be launched even from outside the premises of an enterprise. They are particularly easy to launch since DoS attack tools are freely available and do not require specialized hardware or software.

"With 802.11n, organizations using WLANs are expected to support far more demanding, mission-critical applications on a much larger scale. As a result, availability can no longer be left to chance," said network security analyst Lisa Phifer, President of Core Competence Inc. "Administrators absolutely must be able to rapidly diagnose and effectively mitigate wireless DoS incidents, be they accidental or intentional."

"AirTight continues to innovate and patent cutting edge technology to help our customers protect their networks as use of WLAN grows and they are confronted with emerging threats," said Dr. Hemant Chaskar, Director of Technology at AirTight Networks. "Just as AirTight was the first WIPS vendor to offer both an 802.11n sensor platform and wireless vulnerability management on demand, the inclusion of DoS prevention in AirTight's SpectraGuard WIPS has been another important step in that direction."

Wireless DoS attacks on WiFi are inevitable. Even the emerging 802.11w standard or the proprietary technologies such as MFP address only a tiny subset of these DoS attacks leaving WiFi networks exposed to a larger set of these attacks. As organizations make more and more mission critical applications available over WiFi, DoS attacks have become an increasing concern. AirTight provides unique workflow to counter wireless DoS attacks in its SpectraGuard® family of products as follows:

• DoS Attack Detection: Good DoS management workflow starts with accurate detection of DoS attacks while avoiding false alarms during normal wireless activity.
• DoS Impact Reduction: DoS attacks can completely wipe out legitimate wireless communication. While avoiding impact of DoS attack altogether is not possible, it is desirable to take measures to reduce the impact of DoS attack on legitimate communication whenever appropriate. 
• DoS Attacker Location Tracking: Physical remediation is necessary for DoS attacks. For this, the administrator needs to know physical location of the DoS attacker device so that it can be removed from the wireless network. DoS attacker location tracking needs to work differently from location tracking of APs and clients. This is because; many of the DoS attacks are launched by spoofing authorized devices’ MAC addresses. Many others are launched using random MAC addresses. 

AirTight is the only vendor to offer such complete workflow to counter DoS attacks using original technology, which is covered by the above U.S. patent.

About AirTight's Patent Portfolio
With the granting of this new patent, AirTight now has a total of ten U.S. patents, one Australian patent, and one UK patent. It has several more 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 patent portfolio covers the entire range from broad wireless intrusion prevention architectures to specific algorithms and techniques.

• The seminal 7,002,943 patent for the wireless intrusion prevention was awarded to AirTight by the USPTO in February 2006. The USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) later ruled in favor of AirTight Networks and its U.S. Patent No. 7,002,943 in an interference action provoked by competitor, AirDefense, in an attempt to usurp the 7,002,943 patent from AirTight. That ruling re-affirmed AirTight’s leadership position as the first company to invent, deliver and patent a truly effective WIPS solution.
• The second patent, number 7,154,874 was granted by USPTO in December 2006, which expanded the scope and reinforced the strength of the first.
• The third patent, number 7,216,365, was granted by USPTO in May 2007, which gave small to medium businesses the same accurate, automated protection enjoyed by large enterprise customers.
• The fourth and fifth patents, numbers 7,333,800 and 7,333,481, granted by USPTO in February 2008, cover scalable prevention of prevalent wireless threat scenarios to reduce sensor density requirements and increase threat protection.
• The sixth patent, number 7,339,914, granted by USPTO in March 2008, covers techniques for accurate autoclassification.
• The seventh patent, number 200429804, granted in Australia in March 2008, extends the coverage of the seminal WIPS patent to Australia.
• The eighth patent, number 7,406,320, granted by USPTO in July 2008, covers technology for robust location tracking.
• The ninth patent, number 2410154, granted in UK in August 2008, extends coverage of the seminal WIPS patent to UK.
• The tenth patent, number 7,440,434, granted by USPTO in September 2008, covers additional techniques for accurate autoclassification.
• The eleventh patent, number 7,447,184, granted by USPTO in November 2008, covers techniques for accurate detection of local and distributed MAC spoofing attacks.
• The twelfth patent, number 7,496,094, granted by USPTO in February 2009, covers techniques to counter wireless DoS attacks.

Complete information about AirTight’s IP portfolio can be found at http://www.airtightnetworks.net/patents

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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