Don't Fall Over the Security Cliff...

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July 25, 2005 (Computerworld) -- ...on your network edge. With PDAs, smart phones, USB fobs, laptops and other portable devices attaching to and detaching from your network at will, you need to heed warnings that crucial corporate data might slip by your firewalls, intrusion-detection systems and user authentication processes. "IT managers have been totally blindfolded with regard to the security of endpoints," argues Gil Sever, CEO of Safend Ltd. in Tel Aviv. In early September, the company hopes to remedy part of the problem with its new Safend Protector software. The tool includes client-side code for Windows-based systems that enforces device access policies at the corporate, departmental or individual level. For example, you can restrict a laptop's ability to print to different printers based on its location or serial number. Or you can allow end users to read from USB thumb drives but not write to them. When you install Protector or change access policies, you need not reboot your PCs, Sever says. Pricing will start at $32 per seat, and volume discounts are available.
While many of you manage mobile workers whose pockets are stuffed with all manner of messaging and Web-ready gadgets, some of you oh-so-lucky ones get to support countless consumers accessing your systems with an even wider array of digital devices. How do you know the person who just downloaded her stock portfolio to a Palm device is who she says she is? A static ID and password, perhaps? Stu Vaeth, chief security officer at Diversinet Corp. in Toronto, thinks that isn't enough. His company's MobiSecure software lets you dynamically provision passwords to mobile devices via soft tokens. The tiny app runs on BlackBerry, Java, Palm, Symbian and Windows CE handhelds and is accessed via a PIN. It calls a back-end security application to verify the device so the user can then sign in. VeriSign Inc. liked MobiSecure enough to plan field trials for later this summer with the intention of rolling out the software in the fall as part of its United Authentication technology. Diversinet also hopes to sell MobiSecure through other vendors, Vaeth says.
The treacherous network edge is made even scarier by malicious or incompetent end users who can easily access and distribute confidential information. According to Steve Roop, vice president of marketing at Vontu Inc. in San Francisco, 68 security breaches had been made public this year through mid-July, prompted partly by California's data breach disclosure law. Of the 64 incidents in which the source of the data leak has been identified, 49% were caused by insiders, Roop says. He claims the Vontu 5.0 security software suite, which is due to ship by the end of September,

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