Sun Microsystems announces new solutions to secure the network

Sun Microsystems has unveiled several new security solutions and technologies to relieve businesses from the continual and costly disruption of computer services caused by viruses and other threats.

According to Tarun Pranjivan, security ambassador for Sun Microsystems South Africa, the new offerings are encompassed in features of Solaris 10 (to be released later this year), while the company has released a Reference Solution for building secure global government computing networks. It has also added advanced features for the Sun Crypto Accelerator 4000 board.

"Dealing with security breaches is costing businesses and government more every year," notes Pranjivan. "With the Java security model, Solaris, the 'gold standard' for defence agency-grade operating systems; Java Card technology for secure smart card authentication; and the Sun Java System Identity Server, we're delivering a full strategy and architecture for trusted network computing."

Advances in Solaris 10 technology include N1 Grid Containers, predictive self-healing technologies and security enhancements that strengthen the already robust Solaris and Trusted Solaris OS. "Trusted Solaris is already the commercial operating system to be certified against the highest combination of assurance levels and protection profiles. Now, with the new security features, it has increased its lead over anything else in the market," notes Pranjivan.

These enhancements include Process Rights Management, which limits access of processes and applications to system resources, allowing access and use to only the system resources that they need to get specific jobs done. This new feature also prevents a hacked application from corrupting an entire system.

The Solaris Cryptographic Framework introduces a single framework for easier administration and common utilisation of cryptographic routines in the operating system, while Minimised Install is a new option for installing Solaris with no network services enabled and smaller disk usage. This feature works in conjunction with the free Solaris Security Toolkit for creating a security-hardened Solaris platform running just the services a customer needs.

The Sun Reference Solution for Secure Network Access Platform provides a rapid deployment blueprint for companies to create highly secure, stable and efficient network configurations. It can provide immediate reductions in acquisition costs through the consolidation of multiple PC clients into a single Sun Ray client, and through improved end-user operations efficiencies in their secure information day-to-day workflow.

Finally, Sun has announced an upgrade to its Sun Crypto Accelerator 4000 board that makes it more open and flexible for businesses to use. The Crypto Accelerator is a hardware cryptography device that offloads security functions (both SSL and IPsec) from the system processor. As a result, customers do not need to purchase additional computing capacity to handle secure transactions. The upgrade allows customers to configure the accelerator for either more security bandwidth or for more system resources, depending on their needs.