FHLBanks Office of Finance Reduces Firewall Policy Complexity and Increases IT Security Administrator's Productivity With FireMon From Secure Passage

OVERLAND PARK, KS--(Marketwire - September 22, 2009) - Secure Passage today announced that the Federal Home Loan Banks Office of Finance (FHLB-OF or OF), the joint facility of one of the largest sources of mortgage credit in the country, has successfully implemented FireMon eVolution (V5) to automate the analysis of its firewall traffic and policies to reduce complexity within its firewall rule bases, improve efficiency, and increase security. Manual data collection and analysis processes that normally took days to complete, now take less than an hour.

The OF's firewall environment is complex, containing many firewalls with hundreds of rules and objects. FireMon automatically collects and analyzes data about one rule or any number of rules and objects. With FireMon, security administrators have the information they need to optimize the rule base for maximum performance and adherence to security policies and industry regulations.

As a cost center, the FHLB-OF seeks to operate as efficiently as possible. The Federal Home Loan Bank System is organized as a cooperative, and includes 12 regional banks representing every area of the country. For over 77 years, the FHLBank System has delivered on its mission to improve access to housing by providing billions of dollars of liquidity to its 8,100 members in the form of secured loans. These funds are then put to work in local communities across America to finance housing and economic development projects. Because the Federal Home Loan Bank System is a cooperative, its low costs are passed on to communities and consumers. About 80 percent of regulated U.S. lending institutions are Federal Home Loan Bank members.

"Here is an example of how much FireMon has helped us," stated Kimberly Sims, IT Security Administrator. "In order for me to see how a single rule was really behaving, I would have to pull each daily log for the past month, merge the log files into one large log file, and then, through a log view analysis, I could see what traffic was actually going over that rule. It was a very manual, labor intensive process that took up all of my time. Now I can just mark a rule and a report is available for me to review in less than an hour instead of days."

The FHLB-OF reviewed a number of competing products before they selected FireMon. The deciding factor was FireMon's Traffic Flow Analysis feature. This feature provides analysis that understands the complete flow of traffic including source, destination and service. This enables FireMon to start with an existing policy, analyze the traffic through the firewall, and automatically define the necessary rules to enable appropriate access to meet the existing network traffic needs. This level of analysis enables firewall managers to improve firewall performance and build better security policies.

"Another important benefit is that FireMon eliminates the paranoia of something breaking and 'crossing of fingers' associated with every new firewall policy that gets pushed out," continued Sims. "FireMon's Policy Test Analysis feature allows us to fully test a policy and verify how it will impact our environment. We are much more comfortable and confident pushing out new policies using FireMon.

"Our relationship with the OF has truly been a partnership from the first day we met with them," said Jody Brazil, Secure Passage president and CTO. "As a company, we are committed to listening to what people want, validating their needs and developing those features. The OF was one of the first to request traffic flow analysis and we delivered. We look forward to working with them as we continue to enhance FireMon and expand our product line to help every organizations increase staff productivity while reducing risk and compliance costs."

About the FHLBank System

The Federal Home Loan Bank System is a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) created in 1932 to improve access to housing for all Americans. Organized as a cooperative, the FHLBanks raise funds in the global capital markets, and then make secured loans to member financial institutions for mortgage lending and local economic development. Approximately 8,100 community financial institutions around the country are members of the Federal Home Loan Bank System.

About Secure Passage

Secure Passage, the leading provider of firewall and network device policy management solutions, is dedicated to providing better security through better management. Secure Passage solutions empower Information Security teams, enabling them to reduce policy complexity, maximize security and achieve compliance. Hundreds of global enterprises and government agencies with thousands of firewalls and network devices rely on FireMon -- Secure Passage's customizable, scalable flagship product -- to ensure their networks remain free from interruption and available for secure business transactions at all times. FireMon supports all major firewall and network devices, including those from Cisco, Juniper, Check Point, and McAfee. For more information, visit www.securepassage.com.

FireMon and the FireMon logo are registered trademarks of Secure Passage, LLC. All other products or company names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks to their respective owners.

Contact Information: Contact: Joe Franscella Trainer Communications 925-271-8213