Verizon Business Introduces New Portfolio of Converged Solutions Addressing Security, Performance Challenges Faced by Large Business

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - Verizon Business announced Wednesday (Feb. 18) that it is rolling out a new portfolio of converged solutions that address the security and performance challenges faced by large corporations.

The new solutions - built on the company's world-class professional, managed and security capabilities - will meet the increased demand for integrated capabilities spanning the entire IT "stack," which is the computing structure that includes the network, data, application and user layers.

This suite of integrated solutions will enable companies to more efficiently build a secure, high-performance communications and IT infrastructure to enhance overall business performance.  It also addresses a critical issue that enterprise IT organizations often struggle with: how to seamlessly work between the IT groups responsible for different layers of the stack in order to avoid data breaches and poor application performance affecting the daily operations of an organization.

Verizon Business' new solutions portfolio, which initially consists of five converged offerings, features Virtual Discovery and Classification (VDC). The VDC service combines professional services, security log analysis and advanced tools to analyze an organization's Internet traffic to discover unusual malicious or unexpected traffic patterns and connections that can potentially cause harm to a customer's network. 

"Today's extended enterprise faces a wide range of challenges requiring a holistic approach to conducting business," said Kerry Bailey, senior vice president-global services, Verizon Business.

"Through our launch of converged solutions, we are providing enterprises with new types of solutions that cut across the fundamental IT areas to strengthen security and application performance.  As a result, enterprises can improve business performance and gain new efficiencies, while letting Verizon Business handle all the complexities associated with today's technology," Bailey said.

The VDC offering is available immediately to U.S-based enterprises.  Verizon Business plans to launch the four other converged solutions during the first half of this year. They are:

• Application Performance and Vulnerability Assessment, which offers an expert assessment of critical business applications resulting in recommendations to improve both performance and security.

• PCI-ready E-commerce Solution, which combines hosting and application management offerings with security services to help an organization become PCI compliant with regard to safeguarding credit card transactions.
• CoLo Vulnerability Management Service, which integrates vulnerability management services into a data center colocation environment, using a self-service model to deliver end-to-end security.
• Secure Virtualization Design Services, which help enterprises redesign an existing IT infrastructure to achieve the benefits of virtualization while maintaining a secure environment.

Global managed and professional services - a key part of Verizon Business' strategic services offerings - represent a significant growth area for the company, which delivers advanced communications, security and IT solutions for 98 percent of the Fortune 500.  Verizon Business expects to experience continued expansion in this area throughout 2009.  In addition, the company's strategic services - which also include fast-growing IP, Ethernet and optical-ring services - drove revenue of $6 billion in 2008, up 16 percent from 2007.    

VDC Offers Unprecedented Security Landscape View

Verizon's new VDC offering addresses the needs of large enterprises to manage and protect a highly complex network environment, and to continually obtain timely, reliable information and intelligence about emerging security threats. This is often difficult for those without visibility into their own Internet traffic patterns and access to external security resources.

The VDC service analyzes an organization's Internet traffic data using advanced processes and tools and a variety of analysis techniques to map and characterize this traffic. 

This new leading-edge offering is designed to discover so-called "unknown connections," which have been linked to 27 percent of successful attacks according to Verizon Business' "2008 Data Breach Investigation Report."  The new service also helps detect the actual source of attack activity and has successfully been used by Verizon in helping to find the origin of a customer's data breach. 

The service also detects suspicious connections involving network usage by an enterprise's current and former business partners, a category that the Verizon data breach report found responsible for 39 percent of the worst computer-crime cases, and is the fastest-growing category of risk to enterprises.

Other areas the service analyzes are: telecommuters' connections to an enterprise's virtual private network (VPN), which can be compromised even though it is set up to protect against security breaches; violations of the customer's corporate IT and security policies, which many times point to unapproved usage of services; configuration issues resulting from improperly configured devices or other anomalies; and a history of previous attacks that provide insight into the origin of the threat. 

All findings are communicated directly to the client by a dedicated expert who helps guide the interpretation, analysis, remediation and other recommendations.

Delivering Solutions Through Key Practice Areas

Verizon Business excels in delivering solutions across key practice areas that address a wide range of business and technology issues for today's extended enterprise, which includes employees, customers, partners and suppliers.

The professional services team provides recommendations for accelerating the transition to new technologies, applications and delivery methods; provides supplemental staff to expand in-house resource and capabilities; and addresses growing security compliance requirements.  

Verizon Business delivers a standardized set of more than 50 professional-service capabilities in 30 countries around the globe.  The services are delivered through more than 2,700 specially trained and experienced consultants in five key practice areas: Security Services, IT Services, Network Integration and Engineering, IP Communications and Contact Center Services.

The company provides a complementary set of managed network, managed hosting and managed security offerings, and manages and maintains more than 4,000 customer networks and more than 270,000 communications devices around the globe. Its global infrastructure, including one of the most expansive and the most connected* global IP networks in the world, provide a unique foundation from which to serve multinational customers.

For more information, visit www.verizonbusiness.com/solutions/professional.

About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a global IP leader and network-based partner for delivering integrated communications and information technology (IT) solutions to large-business and government customers worldwide.  Combining unsurpassed reach with managed services, security, mobility, collaboration and professional services capabilities, Verizon Business delivers global solutions that power innovation and enable its customers to do business better.  For more information, visit www.verizonbusiness.com.

####

* Based on number of autonomous system network connections, 2008 TeleGeography Global Internet Geography Database and Report.

NOTE: This news release contains statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties.  For those statements, we claim the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  The following important factors could affect future results and could cause those results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements: materially adverse changes in economic and industry conditions and labor matters, including workforce levels and labor negotiations, and any resulting financial and/or operational impact, in the markets served by us or by companies in which we have substantial investments; material changes in available technology, including disruption of our suppliers' provisioning of critical products or services; the impact of natural or man-made disasters or litigation and any resulting financial impact not covered by insurance; technology substitution; an adverse change in the ratings afforded our debt securities by nationally accredited ratings organizations; the final results of federal and state regulatory proceedings concerning our provision of retail and wholesale services and judicial review of those results; the effects of competition in our markets; the timing, scope and financial impacts of our deployment of fiber-to-the-premises broadband technology; the ability of Verizon Wireless to continue to obtain sufficient spectrum resources; changes in our accounting assumptions that regulatory agencies, including the SEC, may require or that result from changes in the accounting rules or their application, which could result in an impact on earnings; and the ability to complete acquisitions and dispositions.