Affant welcomes Matthew Thomas, the newest addition to the customer support team. Matthew is from a small town in Oklahoma, and he graduated from the University of Oklahoma. In 2001, he moved to California to find his niche. His IT background is a diverse one including a position in Data Processing for Ameriquest Mortgage Co, a Digital Consultant role for Kinko's, Help Desk Support for local tech support company, and then a Manager of IT position at an event coordinating company in Orange County.

Last month Affant hosted its first of a series of Executive Roundtables at Il Fornaio Restaurant in Irvine, CA. The event was open strictly to decision makers in Affant's existing customer base. The goal of this roundtable was to focus on the topic of IP Telephony and its business drivers. It was an opportunity for an intimate group of no more than 10 executives to share their experiences, successes, and challenges with this technology and to learn from those of others. No vendors were invited to the event. The group included 6 executives from our client base as well as Dave Brown, Affant's Director of New Business, Elisabeth Egan, Affant's Marketing Manager, and Gregory Keyes, Affant's CEO who acted as the moderator in this discussion. The discussion provided meaningful content for each executive. Please look for information about the next Executive Roundtable in future Affant Updates.

The Juniper Networks Secure Services Gateway firewalls (from here on referenced as SSG) are Juniper's next generation solution for enterprise security and are the future replacement for Netscreen firewalls. The Juniper Networks SSG series are a robust router/firewall/vpn solution with models available to service a site with just a single teleworker all the way up to the headquarters of a large company with thousands of users. Juniper Networks firewalls also have the capability to do Kaspersky antivirus, intrusion prevention, stateful packet inspection, url blocking via Websense or Surf Control and other options as well. The Juniper Networks firewalls also supports a strong queue based system that allows excellent traffic prioritization over the network, ensuring that business applications are not starved for data.