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AirTight Granted Another Patent on Accurate Autoclassification Technology

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Also Extends Coverage of Its Earlier Granted Seminal WIPS Patent in U.S. to International Markets

AirTight Now Has 6 U.S. and 1 Australian Granted Patents and 25 Pending Patents

San Francisco, CA -- AirTight® Networks, the leading provider of wireless vulnerability management (WVM) solutions and the first wireless security company to offer WVM on-demand, today announced at RSA 2008 that it has been awarded another U.S. patent, number 7,339,914, by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), for its fully automated and accurate autoclassification technology.

Concurrently, AirTight also announced that it has been granted an Australian patent, number 200429804, by the Australian patent office. The Australian patent is based on AirTight's seminal WIPS patent in the U.S., number 7,002,943, titled "Method and System for Monitoring a Selected Region of an Airspace Associated with Local Area Networks of Computing Devices."

AirTight pioneered the autoclassification technology, which automatically, continuously and accurately classifies between threats and false alarms. The autoclassification greatly simplifies wireless vulnerability management and reduces operational costs. AirTight uses a suite of techniques and algorithms for comprehensive autoclassification.

Wireless activity in the enterprise space is growing steadily as more devices are deployed with embedded WiFi and .11n with increased range. Conventional wireless security scanning, auditing and remediation techniques require continuous manual intervention to separate real threats from false alarms. This makes maintaining a good security posture and meeting regulatory compliance requirements in the face of this continuously changing environment more challenging than ever. Manual methods are expensive, error prone, hard to sustain and not scaleable. With autoclassification, AirTight's customers can afford to focus on their core business priorities instead of spending time and resources chasing down false alerts generated by non-automated WIDS systems.

"This patented autoclassification technology provides quantum reduction in cost and effort required to maintain wireless security posture on a continuous basis. Organizations with resource and budget constraints no longer need to make a hard choice between 'High' security or 'No' security," said Dr. Hemant Chaskar, director of technology at AirTight.

Just as AirTight pioneered autoclassification, AirTight invented and delivered the first comprehensive WIPS in the industry. 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, which attempted 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. AirDefense has circulated the white paper which made false statements and assumptions about AirTight's ownership of and invention of the patented WIPS technology. This patent board ruling was a definitive decision against their misinformation campaign.

AirTight is now in the process of extending its seminal WIPS patent rights to several countries outside the United States, and the grant of the Australian patent is another vindication of AirTight's superiority and the novelty of its technology. AirTight has patents pending in several major WIPS markets such as Europe, Australia, Japan, Korea, and India.

About AirTight's Patent Portfolio

With the granting of these two patents, AirTight now has a total of six 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 patent portfolio covers a broad range of technology needed to provide truly effective WIPS, ranging from architectures to specific algorithms and techniques.

The seminal 7,002,943 patent for wireless intrusion prevention was awarded to AirTight by the USPTO in February 2006. By virtue of the 7,002,943 patent, AirTight holds right to exclude others from making and selling a truly effective WIPS in the United States, which AirTight can exercise at will.
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, cover techniques for accurate autoclassification.
The seventh patent, number 200429804, granted in Australia in March 2008, extends the coverage of seminal WIPS patent to Australia.

Complete information about AirTight's IP portfolio can be found at http://www.airtightnetworks.com/home/company/patent-information.html.

About AirTight Networks

AirTight Networks, the industry standard for wireless vulnerability management, is the only company that offers customers a flexible, end-to-end solution that gives them visibility into their wireless security posture and a choice in how to manage it. Airtight provides full wireless intrusion prevention systems (WIPS) and the world's first on demand wireless vulnerability management service. AirTight's patented technology delivers the key elements of an effective WIPS to eliminate false alarms, block wireless threats immediately and automatically and locate wireless devices and events with pinpoint precision. AirTight's customers include global retail, financial services, corporate, education and government organizations. AirTight Networks is a privately held company based in Mountain View, CA. For more information please visit www.airtightnetworks.com.

AirTight Networks and the AirTight Networks logo are trademarks; AirTight and SpectraGuard are registered trademarks of AirTight Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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