Helsinki, Finland, September 26, 1998 -- Data Fellows Ltd., a leading data security vendor, and BackWeb Technologies, a leader in push solutions for Knowledge Distribution, today announced an agreement to integrate BackWeb’s Polite Server and Agent technology into Data Fellows’ CounterSign management architecture. The CounterSign architecture provides a scaleable, policy-based framework for managing the security infrastructure.

By including BackWeb technology in Data Fellows products, protection against security breaches reach the highest level, as the security system will automatically and transparently keep itself up-to-date during idle time online. BackWeb’s solution will complement the existing Internet update technology in F-Secure security products, which include F-Secure Workstation Suite, F-Secure Anti-Virus, F-Secure FileCrypto, F-Secure VPN+, F-Secure SSH and F-Secure NameSurfer.

"Combining our integrated security solutions with BackWeb’s Polite distribution technology provides clear benefits to corporate customers in today’s insecure Internet environments," said Risto Siilasmaa, President and CEO of Data Fellows. "The use of bandwidth-friendly and scaleable push technology is a natural extension of our strong Internet approach."

F-Secure utilizes BackWeb’s new client, which allows data transfer to customer networks securely even through firewalls. Administrators of corporate networks will be able to make the decision about deploying the a particular version update in their networks on a case-by-case basis if they prefer to evaluate the updates before deployment. This type of implementation ensures that customers always have the latest versions on hand and are able to follow company security policy on software distribution. Data Fellows will also utilize the BackWeb broadcast channel for delivering alerts as well as relevant product service and support information to the corporate administrators and to its partners world-wide.

Data Fellows’s future plans include establishing partnerships with ISPs for using BackWeb’s push technology and its down- and upstream capabilities to enable ISPs to find new sources of revenue from value-added services, such as well-managed security services.