Forwarded From: darek milewski <darekm@cmeasures.com>
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,31136,00.html?st.ne.fd.mdh
Blue chips join for online security
By Tim Clark
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 19, 1999, 10:30 p.m. PT
Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies, and Network Associates have
signed on as the first members of a collaborative research effort among
major online security research laboratories.
The newly formed Security Research Alliance (SRA) has three goals:
encourage collaborative research, communicate security research findings
to corporate computing executives, and improve the chances that basic
research findings will become commercial products.
More blue-chip companies may join shortly. Discussions are under way
with research labs at IBM, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, AT&T, Sun Microsystems,
and Intel, according to Terry Benzel, director of research at Network
Associates, which spearheaded tonight's announcement.
The announcement was made in conjunction with the annual RSA Data
Security conference, which is emerging as a key venue not just for
cryptographers but also for network security firms. RSA, which runs a
research lab focused on cryptography, has so far not been invited to join
the new consortium.
"This is a whole new approach for advancing the art of
state-of-the-art research," Benzel said. She described the consortium of
security research labs as "vendor-neutral" and focused on research that
will hit the market in two to five years.
The new alliance is being unofficially encouraged by DARPA, the
research arm of the U.S. Defense Department, a major funder of advanced
security research.
"The government is demanding collaboration for most funding from
DARPA," Benzel told CNET News.com. "They are looking for collaborative
partnerships." But other influences are also at work.
"We see security research getting even more important with the
Internet and electronic commerce," said H.M. Gittleson, director of
Internet security products at Lucent, which now owns the renowned Bell
Labs research operation.
But HP, for one, remains on the sidelines. Roberto Medrano, who runs
HP's security business, told News.com he wonders if SRA, which said it
will create a Web page in the near future, will move beyond the "PR
alliances" that have become common, on paper at least, in the security
industry.
SRA will get started in earnest with a Los Angeles symposium on April
13, the day prior to the spring Internet World trade show.
-o-
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Received on Thu Mar 11 17:06:57 1999