SAN JOSE, Calif., - Secure Computing Corporation, the experts in protecting the most important networks in the world, today announced that its Sidewinder® G₂ Firewall™, just 3 months after its release, has attained ICSA Labs' most current and most robust IPSec certification. This latest IPSec certification, along with the previously announced, industry leading EAL4+ Common Criteria certification, provides consistent, independent 3rd party verification that the Sidewinder G₂ Firewall meets high-level requirements against criteria that are widely accepted in the industry. Currently, the Sidewinder G₂ Firewall is the only firewall to attain the highest-level certifications from both of the industry's most respected organizations.

The ICSA Labs' Certification Programs provide assurance to the user community that its certified products meet industry-accepted product standards worldwide. Products certified under the latest IPSec 1.1 criteria must meet all of the requirements for the IPSec 1.0B criteria plus demonstrate the added capability of employing extended use of digital certificates in support of VPN services. Lab testing verified the Sidewinder G₂ Firewall's capability to use digital certificates in VPN sessions including: enrolling certificates securely; using LDAPv3 calls over the network to interoperate with leading certificate servers like Entrust and VeriSign; and accurately denying VPN connections to VPN clients or servers that have revoked or expired certificates. IPSec 1.1 certification also ensures that Sidewinder G₂ is interoperable with the other vendors' products certified at the version 1.1 level and nearly 20 other vendors' systems certified at the earlier 1.0B certification level.

"ICSA Labs sets a high standard for assurance and security that all certified products must meet and maintain, with successive levels of certification raising the bar a little higher," said George Japak, vice president of ICSA Labs. "Currently our highest IPSec certification, IPSec 1.1 certification has been achieved by only a handful of vendors, and we are pleased to add Secure Computing's Sidewinder G₂ to that list."

ICSA Labs creates globally accepted security product standards and testing procedures. As the industry leader in certification, ICSA Labs sets the standard by performing extensive research as well as tracking and measuring risks. More information regarding the ICSA Labs' Certification as well as vendor product, version and build numbers can be found on the ICSA Labs' Web site at: http://www.icsalabs.com.

Sidewinder G₂ Firewall provides enterprise strong™ protection for the world's most important networks. With simple Power-It-On™ deployment and SecureOS® UNIX operating system, the G₂ Firewall and VPN gateway improves manageability and lets you say "good-bye" to emergency security patches without sacrificing performance. Sidewinder G₂™'s hybrid, tunable architecture encompasses the entire range of firewall mechanisms from stateful inspection to application proxies, secured servers, and Strikeback® intrusion detection and automated response.

"When Secure Computing purchased the Gauntlet product and subsequently announced our Sidewinder G₂ product plans, key deliverables with those plans were independent validation of the quality and robustness of the delivered product," said Mike Gallagher, vice president and general manager of the Network Security Division at Secure Computing. "Our ICSA IPSec certification completes another step in delivering that product vision to the marketplace."

About ICSA Labs
ICSA Labs, an independent division of TruSecure Corporation, offers vendor-agnostic testing and certification of security products. Hundreds of the world's top security vendors submit their products for testing and certification at ICSA Labs. The end-users of security technologies rely on ICSA Labs to authoritatively set and apply objective testing and certification criteria for measuring product compliance and reliability. The organization tests 95% of products in key technology categories such as anti-virus, cryptography, PKI, IPSec, VPN, firewall, PC firewall, intrusion detection and content security.

About Secure Computing
Secure Computing (Nasdaq: SCUR) has been protecting the most important networks in the world for over 20 years. With broad expertise in security technology, we develop network security products that help our customers create a trusted environment both inside and outside of their organizations. Our global customers and partners include the majority of the Dow Jones Global 50 Titans and the most prominent organizations in banking, financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, manufacturing, public utilities, and federal and local governments. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has sales offices worldwide. For more information, see http://www.securecomputing.com. #