Security products struggle to reach new standards

ICSA Labs, which provides one of the most important certifications that firewall vendors strive for, says it has completed the first wave of tests on products using its newest version 4.0 certification.

The first products to pass the 4.0 test at the corporate level are CyberGuard`s Firewall Appliance, Novell`s BorderManager Firewall, NetScreen`s Firewall Family, Intoto`s iGateway, Cisco`s PIX, GTA`s Family of Firewalls, Check Point`s Firewall-1 NG on Linux, Nortel`s Alteon Switched Firewall and FortiNet`s FortiGate Family.

However, "no product passed in the first round, and some of these products were ones that had previously passed the 3.0 criteria", says ICSA Labs programme manager Brian Monkman. "A number of vendors had to make significant changes to their products to achieve certification."

For the first time, ICSA has also split its certification into three categories and is awarding three different certification logos - for residential, small and medium business and corporate firewall products.

"Firewall vendors didn`t want a firewall that costs $100 000 to have the same certification as one costing $200," says Monkman. "The one-size-fits-all criteria doesn`t work any more." [TheRegister]

Samsung Electronics has released its new Internet-enabled HomePAD refrigerator. The refrigerator is equipped with a host of connectivity options including a wireless LAN access point and printer connection points. Communicating with the fridge is done through a touch-screen built into the door, called the HomePAD. The HomePAD can also be detached from the fridge and carried around.

Detached, the HomePAD works as a multimedia Web tablet with an integrated digital camera. It is also able to replay DVD and Webcam content.

Sun Microsystems has concluded a deal with a division of Sony to pre-install its StarOffice 6.0 office suite Sony PCs sold in Europe, as it looks to grow its share of the market dominated by Microsoft`s Office software.

The deal will put StarOffice 6.0 on select Sony Vaio desktops sold by the end of the year and will be made available in English, French, German and Italian.

Sun`s announcement is the latest in a string of deals that computer original equipment manufacturers have made with software vendors to install products other than Microsoft`s ubiquitous Office productivity suite on consumer PCs. In North America, Sony already has a deal with Corel to ship the WordPerfect productivity suite on some Vaio desktop and notebook PCs. [InfoWorld]

Microsoft has released an update to its Small Business Manager, an integrated collection of accounting modules that work with the company`s Office applications as well as some Microsoft Web services for small businesses.

Small Business Manager 7.0 is designed for businesses with less than 25 employees, says Karen Engel, lead product manager for Microsoft Small Business Manager. It is Microsoft`s second update of the product since its acquisition of Great Plains Software. Microsoft bought the accounting software company about two years ago.

Unlike some of its competitors, Microsoft doesn`t market the modules for this accounting package separately but bundles the standard selection into a suite. Primary new functions in this release are inventory management, purchase order procuring and sales order procuring, Engel says. [PCWorld]

Hewlett-Packard will deliver the next version of its Alpha processor in January. This will also be the last architectural upgrade for the processor because the Alpha is planned for retirement 18 months from now. The company is retiring the chip, along with its PA-RISC processors, with plans to move all its higher-end servers to Intel`s 64-bit Itanium family.

With Alpha nearing the end of its lifecycle, the EV7 is unlikely to attract many new enterprise customers, but it is important for the installed base of Alpha users who need it to upgrade their systems. The chip may also prove popular among academic and research institutions that use it for high-performance technical computing applications, analysts say.

Only about 5% of the installed base of Unix servers runs on Alpha processors, according to analyst estimates, but the chip has something of a larger-than-life presence thanks to its strong performance reputation and a loyal user following that is "almost cult-like", according to one analyst. [InfoWorld]

This week in TechNiche:
Unisys plans Linux on mainframes
Sun looks for StarOffice resellers
Intel releases compiler software