Security's next steps

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If the multifaceted computer attack threats and surprises of the past year are any indication, 2003 could shake out to be as tumultuous and unpredictable as its predecessor.

Luckily, a host of next-generation security technology advancements, ranging from encryption and physical biometric identification to revamped perimeter protection, may arm end-users with a new arsenal of security tools to defend against the unknown.

"[Software providers] still don't get it. We still see a lot of solutions proposed to us that don't have security controls put in. It's still a problem," says Carrie Jensen-Badaa, global information security manager at San Francisco-based Barclay's Global Investors (BGI).

Making current security options even less palatable, according to Jensen-Badaa, is that security-embedded solutions often arrive disabled, impeding performance. "I think most buyers today would prefer to have to turn security off rather than turn it on."

Jensen-Badaa would like to see next-generation security integration with enterprise monitoring tools, such as Hewlett-Packard OpenView and Computer Associates' Unicenter, as well as those from IBM/Tivoli and BMC Software. This would create a centralized alerting and monitoring platform, thereby eliminating redundancy (see "Managing it all" ).

"Things that are out there now are so complicated and complex they're really not feasible. And I see more of those products falling back and taking simplistic approach and fine-tuning their feature sets to be more simplistic," says Raleigh Burns, a security administrator at St. Elizabeth Medical Center for Northern Kentucky. "I'd like to see more things integrate. That's where [security] is heading."

Firewalls heat up

Firewall vendors have closely followed computer attackers who have shifted tactics away from the network and instead are targeting Web server applications through Port 80 or Port 443, as well as mail server applications attacks through Port 25.

Nir Zuk, CTO of Sunnvyale, Calif.-based NetScreen Technologies, says his company is merging ID (intrusion detection) protection technology it absorbed from its 2002 OneSecure acquisition with its firewall platform. The security appliance maker expects to have full application layer security in a stand-alone product by mid-2003.

Microsoft is also poised to push the security integration envelope with last week's release of Feature Pack 1 for ISA server. Downloadable from the Web and installed on top of Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Server), Feature Pack 1 heavily favors Microsoft's desire to incorporate application-layer security into its firewall to create intuitive security management, says Lucian Lui, ISA product manager at Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft.

"Customers are telling us, 'We don't understand what's going on in the firewall; what the rules are doing. It's a black box,' " Lui says. "There are some clever things we can build into firewalls to get smarter about logs and filtering, ... thinking about how online services and Web services interact in this space."