This bulletin describes the contents of the Cisco® Secure Services Client 4.0.5 release. Cisco Secure Services Client 4.0.5 is a maintenance release for Cisco Secure Services Client 4.0 product (previously Meetinghouse AEGIS SecureConnect 4.0.4) and contains enhancements as well as bug fixes identified from prior releases. This release is scheduled to be generally available by 8/16/2006.
NEW FEATURES
Smart Card and Smart Card Reader Enhancements
Cisco continues to support Windows-certified smart cards. Gemplus smart cards and smart card readers have been tested and verified with this release. The Gemplus cryptographic service provider supports Microsoft's CryptoAPI and SCard interface and works with Cisco Secure Services Client 4.0.5. The specific smart card and smart card reader models tested with this release are:
• Gemplus GemPC 64K smart cards
• Gemplus GemPC Twin USB smart card reader
• Dell built-in PCMCIA smart card reader for the D610 laptop
• Dell smart card reader keyboard RT7D60
Certificate and Credential Enhancements
Several enhancements related to the handling of certificates and credentials have been made to Cisco Secure Services Client 4.0.5. Certificates are now better organized to help prevent the unintentional selection of an expired certificate when the user enters credentials to gain access to the network. The user is no longer able to select invalid certificates. Also, valid certificates that are about to expire will warn the user by showing how many days are left before the certificate expires.
The administrator can configure the Cisco Secure Services Client to select certificates only from the smart card. This prohibits the use of locally stored certificates and forces the use of a smart card if required. Smart card users are now able to store and access more than one credential from their smart card. Prior releases limited the number of smart card credentials to one.
The protected access credentials (PACs) are now tied to a machine to help prevent the copying of PACs from one endpoint to another and potentially circumventing network access security. The Cisco Secure Services Client will be able to use only PACs that have been created for a particular machine.
Authentication Enhancements
The authentication process has been streamlined in order to reduce the time that a user must wait before being authenticated and granted access to a network. In some cases, the wait time is approximately 30 seconds less for Cisco Secure Services Client 4.0.5
than prior releases.
Additional feedback is now provided to the user during the authentication process. The user can watch the authentication process by launching the Cisco Secure Services Client user interface. If the process fails, the user will see the failure more rapidly with the new feedback mechanism.
AVAILABILITY
August 16, 2006
ORDERING INFORMATION
Table 1 shows ordering information for the Cisco Secure Services Client.
Table 1. Ordering Information for Cisco Secure Services Client
Part Number
Status
Description
AIR-SC4.0-XP2K
NONORD
SW Client 4.0 for Win XP/2K for wired/wireless devices
