A survey of 40 blue chip US companies has revealed that two in five of them think complicated security is "the most irritating aspect of conducting business online", according to Evidian, a subsidiary of Groupe Bull.
Multiple password entry and excessive authorisation procedures were recorded as particular irritants to respondents of the survey. Evidian concludes that too much security makes systems hard to use, and could hamper e-commerce.
"Security should be implemented so that users can get on with their jobs, without constantly running into security blocks," says Brett Myroff, CEO of Netxactics. "But online dealers should never consider entering the virtual world without sufficient protection."
However, controlling access to a network while delivering it at highest performance is no trivial task. It is one of the biggest and most complex issues that IT managers face. Myroff maintains that finding the right balance of technology and infrastructure design, while being able to manage it comfortably, is the real challenge. The answer lies in having security applications and systems that integrate firewall, VPN, and traffic shaping functions.
There is a need to deploy security ubiquitously, whether the security requirement is for the largest Internet data centre or an individual end-user accessing mission-critical computing resources via a DSL or dial-up connection.
Firewalls were the first and are still the predominant solution in the security industry, however, there are some bottlenecks in this software-based architecture. The first is that the underlying operating systems of PC-based solutions are vulnerable to security breaches, since these operating systems were not originally designed with "bullet-proof" security in mind.
Then the complexity of current software configurations has proven problematic, particularly when it comes to ease-of-use and management.
However, the industry`s need for security is evolving rapidly-and the requirement is extending well beyond a firewall. Says Myroff: "Increasingly, customers want a single device to handle both firewall, VPN features as well as provide traffic shaping capability to properly allocate WAN bandwidth and deliver quality-of-service assurances."
In order to deliver the required combination of superior security and performance, the security industry is moving toward Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)-based, purpose-built hardware solution. These purpose-built security solutions use an ASIC to perform authentication and encryption, offloading those functions from the device`s central processors, thus ensuring high performance.
The user benefits by full bandwidth utilisation. "This is the solution that makes most sense for those looking to ensure performance, while not sacrificing security," concludes Myroff.
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