Attachmate Corporation today announced the release of the Attachmate Reflection 2011 R2 family of products. The updated, next-generation terminal emulation software provides strengthened desktop and host security, gives IT administrators the tools they need to pre-configure and successfully deploy the product, improves user efficiency with advanced productivity features, and provides support for new and emerging platforms.

Reflection 2011 reliably connects Windows-platform users to mission-critical legacy applications on virtually any type of host system, enabling organizations to standardize on a single-host connectivity solution and confidently migrate to Microsoft Windows 7.

“With all of the news of sensitive customer data being compromised by large organizations, security is top of mind for our enterprise customers,” said Eric Varness, vice president of marketing for Attachmate. “As such, we’re delivering a game-changing new capability that enables organizations to protect sensitive data on host screens, facilitating compliance with industry and government regulations, like PCI DSS.”

Reflection 2011 R2 supports the stringent security requirements defined by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), as well as new internal security policies that many organizations are enacting. These include masking of sensitive data on live host screens, like credit cards and national ID numbers; redacting data while users type to prevent it from being written down and stolen; barring users from connecting to mission-critical applications unless encryption is enabled for the connection; and allowing administrators to assign different levels of access to private information on host screens, limiting the exposure of sensitive data.

“Securing mission-critical host applications has never been more important,” said Len De Kock, manager of architecture and contracts IT at AVBOB Mutual Assurance Society in South Africa. “Reflection’s ability to mask sensitive data on host screens will help us meet our PCI DSS compliance objectives and provide us with new levels of critical security for sensitive customer data.”

A long term assurance and funeral company based in South Africa, AVBOB is tasked with providing high-quality services to its more than 1.2 million policyholders. AVBOB has relied on Reflection for many years to ensure consistent and secure connectivity to business-critical insurance applications and, more recently, for compliance with relevant PCI DSS regulations. De Kock noted that AVBOB is “very excited about the new Reflection features that leverage key Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 2010 security and productivity capabilities.” These include trusted locations, user account control (UAC), the Microsoft Ribbon user interface, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), and the .NET platform.

Additional new features and functionalities of Reflection 2011 R2 include:

• Browser UI Mode
  Reflection 2011 R2 introduces a browser-like user interface for host sessions that simplifies the user experience similar to next-generation web browsers, allowing users to utilize more screen real estate with host applications and efficiently work without their fingers having to leave the keyboard.
• New .NET Embeddable Control
  Reflection 2011 R2 also offers a new .NET embeddable control that enables Visual Studio .NET developers to augment and enhance the legacy application experience without having to modify the host application.
• A Designated VMware Ready Product
  Reflection Standard Suite 2011 R2 has achieved VMware Ready status. This designation indicates that Reflection 2011 has passed a detailed evaluation and testing process managed by VMware and is now listed on the VMware Partner Product Catalog.

Reflection 2011 includes first-rate support for modern operating environments and virtualization technologies, and leverages key Microsoft Windows 7 and Office 2010 productivity features. In addition, Reflection 2011 can add an extra layer of security in front of host systems via the secure token authorization feature to help organizations further protect mission-critical systems and data.

Attachmate Reflection 2011 products connect Windows users to legacy applications running on IBM System z, IBM System i, UNIX, OpenVMS, and HP NonStop hosts, and provides support for current operating environments such as Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 R2. The software also supports critical virtualization technologies being deployed in the enterprise, such as Microsoft App-V, VMware and Citrix XenApp, and can be deployed via server or client-based virtualization technologies to address incompatibilities and for better central management.

Numerous Attachmate solutions also have earned “Compatible with Microsoft Windows 7” status, demonstrating they have met Windows 7 technical and performance requirements, and that customers can deploy them reliably and with confidence as they migrate their systems to Windows 7.