Hailing from Stockholm, Sweden, one of the world’s premier breeding grounds for mobile-phone technology, wireless network security developer Columbitech is gearing up to take on the United States with a wireless virtual private network product that will allow users to access their corporate local area networks seamlessly and securely, as well as roam between wireless Internet Protocol networks.
The company introduced its network-agnostic Columbitech Wireless VPN product last week, which will enable mobile users to have secure wireless connections over wireless IP networks.
“Columbitech’s approach is able to maintain encryption of the communication past the firewall of a company and all the way into the application, which is essential for true end-to-end security and non-repudiation,” said Pontus Bergdahl, chief executive officer of Columbitech. “This is unlike Ipsec-security, which is typically terminated at the firewall of a company. The wireless world needs stronger, device-specific security since wireless devices can more easily be lost or stolen.”
Bergdahl noted that Columbitech’s security software is different from similar products in that it was designed specifically for wireless networks, whereas other products were adapted from solutions for wireline network security. The company was founded by a L.M. Ericsson development team.
The Columbitech Wireless VPN also allows users to recover and resume transactions from the point they were stopped. For instance, with Columbitech Wireless VPN installed on the network, if a user was downloading a file to a personal digital assistant and the wireless connection was dropped, the user would not have to log in to the network again, or start downloading the file from the beginning.
Columbitech Wireless VPN also enables users to roam safely from one network to another, although Bergdahl said the company is not pushing that capability now because it requires a great deal of coordination between network operators and raises various concerns about billing and customer service.
Columbitech is looking to form partnerships with hardware vendors, wireless service providers like OmniSky Inc. and Aether Systems Inc., and corporate software application vendors. The company already is supplying security software solutions to several customers in Europe, but is hoping to crack the U.S. market where Certicom holds a lion’s share of business.
Columbitech Wireless VPN is currently undergoing trials and will be available for beta testing in the second quarter.
The company is privately held and employs about 26 people.
