Close on the heels of its foray into the local enterprise security market Hewlett-Packard southern Africa is targeting e-commerce and Web transaction processes as its first site for software solutions.
Gary de Menezes, HP's software business manager, believes the local financial, commercial and parastatal market sectors will conduct so much online business this year that security will become one of the highest priorities. HP's Praesidium portfolio is therefore being shipped to South Africa to form the basis of the solution set.
"As the market matures we are seeing a clear trend towards Web-based transactions being increasingly viewed as critical to business success," explains de Menezes.
"Companies will therefore be looking to ensure the integrity and security of these transactions. But they will also want to protect their own resources and information - both from advanced Web server-based attacks and from internal hacking attempts. This is where the two latest Praesidium modules come to the fore."
The first of these modules, VirtualVault, addresses integrity and external security issues.
"When deploying applications for electronic commerce, companies develop multiple layers of defence. Authentication and encryption may protect information as it traverses the Internet. A firewall may protect the network when serving simple mail or file transfers. But none of these solutions offers total protection," warns de Menezes.
VirtualVault, driven by the HP-UX operating system, takes advantage of Netscape's Enterprise Server to provide a highly secure environment in which to host active content and transaction-orientated Web applications.
It also offers network security (including confidentiality, integrity and authentication) between Web clients and the Web server; a least privilege mechanism that eliminates the all-powerful 'root' user; a mechanism for integrity and data partitioning that protects the operating system and divides application components for non-interference; and a browser-based GUI.
"VirtualVault has recently been augmented to include a 'vaulted' Java Virtual Machine. This means protection for the Java 'servlets' used by the Web server when communicating with back-end applications," adds de Menezes.
The other Praesidium module, DomainGuard and DomainGuard Rules, focuses on authorisation issues surrounding the Web face a company presents to its customers.
"The products make it simple for organisations to create and manage a secure Web environment within which customers, business partners and employees can perform transactions and share sensitive information," says de Menezes.
DomainGuard snaps into existing Web server environments to deliver centralised, role-based protection for Web objects and transactions. Point-and-click administration enables IT managers to delegate business access controls while maintaining responsibility for enterprise security policy.
The Praesidium product portfolio is slated for local availability in Q2 this year.
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Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 124,600 employees and had revenue of $47.1 billion in its 1998 fiscal year. http://www.hp.com/security.
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