Novell expands commitment to open source standards with IPsec initiatives

Building on its contributions to the open source community and commitment to interoperability, Novell has announced that it is sponsoring the Openswan project, a Linux implementation of the IPsec (IP Security) standard that provides a common approach to securing Internet-based communications.

In addition, Novell BorderManager 3.8 is among the first to be certified on the latest IPsec interoperability tests from ICSA Labs. By advancing these IPsec initiatives, Novell is helping ensure that organisations migrating to Linux can provide secure remote access to their users.

"Novell has long been a champion of secure remote access, and they recognise the benefits of IPsec virtual private networks for their customers," said Ken Bantoft, Openswan product manager. "Novell`s sponsorship of Openswan allows for the continued development and maintenance of the project and lets us offer new services that will secure our position as the leading IPsec open source project."

Novell`s sponsorship of Openswan includes contributions to the development of its projects. IPsec, the standard way of sending sensitive information over unprotected networks such as the Internet, is the basis for the most widely used VPNs (virtual private networks) among corporate customers. Based on the FreeS/WAN codebase, which was started in 1998, Openswan is running in production on tens of thousands of Linux servers worldwide.

"Security is a key concern for our customers, and we responded by providing the first major Linux distribution with an IPsec VPN," says Allison Singh, systems engineering manager, at Novell SA. "Secure VPNs are an important part of an enterprise-class Linux distribution, and we look forward to contributing to the development of the Openswan project."

ICSA Labs offers vendor-agnostic testing and certification of security products. The IPsec 1.0D certification builds upon previous testing processes for cryptography and standards compliance but also requires that products demonstrate and adhere to standardised logging and stricter interoperability. As a result, customers now have the confidence that the IPsec certified products they use are interoperable across vendor product lines while providing for confidentiality and data integrity.

Novell BorderManager provides proxy-cache, VPN and firewall services with powerful directory-integrated features that enable organisations to control user access to corporate resources and monitor their Internet activities. BorderManager supports connectivity from Linux clients as well as from Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh. The access control provided by Novell BorderManager is a key component of Novell Nsure secure identity management solutions. For more information about the Openswan project, please visit http://www.openswan.org, and for more information about Novell BorderManager, please visit http://www.novell.com/bordermanager.