To Break Web Security Performance Barrier and Combat Malware Evolution, the Company Unveils Breakthrough Innovation at 2009 RSA Conference

CALGARY, AB and SAN FRANCISCO, CA. April 21, 2009 – Wedge Networks Inc. (“Wedge”), Wedge Networks Inc. (“Wedge”), a technology leader in high performance network-based web security solutions, announced today at the 2009 RSA Conference the official introduction of its innovative, phased SubSonic Engine technology (patent-pending) – the company’s breakthrough and the industry’s first Network-Based Content Inspection (NBCI) high performance gigabit engine. The SubSonic Engine powers BeSecure Web Gateway, Wedge’s award-winning network web security appliance. The first phase of the SubSonic Engine innovation is the Lightweight Massive Threading Engine designed to handle large-scale concurrency of network traffic sessions at speeds 10 times faster than other current technology while applying full deep content inspection.

Designed from the ground up to deliver low latency, high concurrency, and Gigabit Throughput for deep content inspection of all the commonly used application layer network protocols and data compression formats, the Wedge SubSonic Engine elevates BeSecure Web Gateway as the most accurate and high performance secure web gateway appliance designed to combat scalability and reliability problems of stopping malware and viruses in real time.

“The innovative SubSonic Engine is being developed to address critical performance issues facing NBCI applications in high-volume application networks, server farms and cloud computing centers,” said Hongwen Zhang, President and CEO of Wedge Networks. “Leveraging new microprocessor architectures, such as Intel’s Nehalem processor, Wedge Networks’ SubSonic Engine enables ultra-high speed deep content inspection for many mission critical applications. Essentially, this new engine will increase the speed of web content scanning (reconstruction, inspection and manipulation) and allow for future resource intensive services to ensure all content on high-volume networks are scanned quickly and thoroughly for threats without disrupting business continuity and safeguarding server farms and cloud computing centers entirely.”

Due to the time required for web content reconstruction, inspection, and manipulation by NBCI devices, network performance can become severely compromised when there are many users accessing large volumes of content, many of which are compressed. With the growing rate of exchanging large archived content over data networks, the inspection of compressed content—such as downloading the latest desktop anti-virus patch and digital images, streaming video, and others—can be highly inefficient rendering these applications unusable. Furthermore, certain inspection tasks, such as 100 percent accurate polymorphic virus scanning, are complex problems; the computational resources required to complete such inspection tasks grow exponentially, which translate into long network latency for NBCI systems, which in turn results in low network throughput. The phased innovation of the Wedge SubSonic Engine is designed to optimize NBCI across multiple protocols, multiple user sessions, and multiple network junctions by deploying:

1. A lightweight massive threading engine: This is the first advancement that effectively reduces system resource requirements and context switching time for handling individual scanning sessions, achieving 10 times current network security scanning speeds. Using the SubSonic Engine, Wedge BeSecure can scale well above tens of thousands of users, scanning content in-depth without compromising accuracy and operational stability. This also allows BeSecure to fit in nicely within new corporate trends – server consolidation through virtualization, branch office network traffic consolidation at head office, use of high-speed storage area networks, data center co-location, cloud computing, and high bandwidth networks (10Gbs).

2. A scan-once-approach across multiple protocols, multiple user sessions and multiple networks junctions: This is the second advancement of the SubSonic Engine innovation expected to be launched late 2009. This advancement allows enormous computation savings by learning from a previous deep content inspection of the same payload, carried over in a different network protocol, a different application session, or a different NBCI node, without injecting any markers in the payload.

3. Scanning for High Performance User Experience: This is the overall benefit of the SubSonic Engine. A NBCI device is typically inline with the network traffic flow; therefore when a large payload with complex compressed components arrives, the approach deployed by conventional vendors will spend a lot of system resources performing content inspection for this particular communication session. The SubSonic Engine prioritizes the deep content inspections to ensure that smaller content gets higher priority and hence better user experience.

“With the increased threat of attacks from viruses, Trojans, worms and spyware, the traditional desktop based anti-virus software protection or unified threat management appliances are not enough; customers must deploy multi-layer and specialized protection to stay ahead of these threats,” continued Zhang. “Over 75 percent of Internet attacks are now happening through Web applications. With traditional security solutions being insufficient, there is an established need for enterprise-grade NBCI engines that perform inline analysis – this is when network content transported by the bearer protocol is assembled, recognized as a MIME type, deflated if it is an archive, and analyzed thoroughly for threats in real time. Wedge Networks is focused on developing the SubSonic Engine and other innovations to meet high-volume network challenges. We have started phased implementations of the SubSonic Engine and expect completion by end of 2009.”

For more information about Wedge Networks and its BeSecure appliance, please visit www.wedgenetworks.com.

About Wedge Networks Inc.

Wedge Networks provides high performance network based web security solutions to enterprises and service providers worldwide. Our technology leadership in deep content inspection allows organizations to protect against new and emerging web based threats that traditional scanning methods have difficulty intercepting and controlling. Specialized in malicious-code detection and filtering at the application layer, our solutions touch millions of users and provide protection for utilities, service providers, heath care, oil and gas, government, web sites, and many other enterprise customers. Wedge Networks is headquartered in Calgary, Canada and has international offices in San Jose, USA and Beijing, China. For more information, please visit www.wedgenetworks.com.

About Wedge BeSecure

Wedge Networks’ award-winning BeSecure Web Security appliance allows enterprises and service providers the ability to detect, block and defend against web-based malicious attacks that steal data, disrupt networks and damage credibility. The BeSecure suite of products include: BeSecure Web Anti-Virus Module, BeSecure Anti-Spam Module, and BeSecure Webfilter Module. For more, please visit http://www.wedgenetworks.com/products.html.

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