AT&T Wins Cisco Service Provider Partner Award for 'Excellence in Managed Security'

SAN ANTONIO, May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- AT&T Inc. has been awarded the 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. Excellence in Managed Security award, for the U.S. Service Provider Segment: presented at Cisco's annual "Partner Summit", held in April. The award recognizes AT&T's innovation and excellence in delivering managed security services leveraging Cisco technology and having invested in training to obtain expertise in selling, designing, installing, managing and supporting comprehensive network security solutions.

"Winning this award is a testament to AT&T's commitment to developing and offering leading services in the managed security market," said Bob Gault, vice president of U.S. Service Provider Channels at Cisco Systems. "Our partners are critical to our combined success, and AT&T has been innovative with the range of managed security services in addressing the market dynamics."

In 2006 AT&T recognized the market need for scalable, encrypted data connections that support the any-to-any features of MPLS networks. AT&T subsequently worked with Cisco's engineering team to develop a managed service based on Cisco's GET (Group Encrypted Tunneling) technology. As MPLS networks become more prevalent, business users increasingly ask for enhancements to their service, especially the ability to encrypt data on their MPLS networks without adding new levels of complexity. GET is a next-generation Wide Area Network (WAN) encryption technology that adds this level of security without the need for new layers of point-to-point tunnels. By removing layers of dedicated tunnels, distributed branch networks are able to scale up while maintaining network intelligence features critical to voice and video quality -- such as Quality of Service (QoS), routing, and Multicast.

"This recognition from Cisco reinforces the combined value that our companies bring to market as well as our commitment to offer customers a variety of managed security services," said Craig Fiaschetti, vice-president, Global Strategic Alliances and Partnerships, AT&T.

AT&T delivers a suite of Security and Business Continuity Services to help customers assess network vulnerabilities, protect infrastructure, detect attacks, respond to suspicious activities and events and design enterprise networking environments for nonstop operations. More information on AT&T security offerings can be found at http://www.business.att.com/security.

For more features, news, videos and photos relating to the Cisco 2007 Partner Summit, visit http://newsroom.cisco.com/partnersummit/2007.

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About AT&T

AT&T Inc. is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates, AT&T operating companies, are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. Among their offerings are the world's most advanced IP-based business communications services and the nation's leading wireless, high speed Internet access and voice services. In domestic markets, AT&T is known for the directory publishing and advertising sales leadership of its Yellow Pages and YELLOWPAGES.COM organizations, and the AT&T brand is licensed to innovators in such fields as communications equipment. As part of its three-screen integration strategy, AT&T is expanding its TV entertainment offerings. Additional information about AT&T Inc. and the products and services provided by AT&T subsidiaries and affiliates is available at http://www.att.com/.

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