Thursday, September 29, 2005

Customer case study: Vordel provides security for SAP XI We're pleased to announce, along with the leading German security solutions firm SHE, a case study of a customer who is using VordelSecure to manage and secure the traffic between their SAP XI system and their logistics partners. Südzucker chose VordelSecure to provide security and management for its XML-based connections to its logistics partners. This was key to the successful enhancement of the company’s business intelligence reporting system based on linking its internal SAP platform to the tracking systems of its freight-forwarders, using SAP Exchange Infrastructure.  As well as protecting Südzucker’s SAP systems from malicious or unauthorized data, VordelSecure also met the requirement to deliver a full transactional audit log and display data traffic on a real-time monitoring console. http://www.vordel.com/news/press/29_09_05.html 2:49:03 PM    comment []

WS-Plumbing I talked to Jon Udell as part of the research for his piece on the WS-* specifications. I think it's important to seperate out the usage of WS-* for message authentication and the usage of WS-* for integration between security products. While there are very good arguments for using alternatives to WS-* for message authentication (that's why Vordel supports SSL, HTTP-Auth, etc), the arguments against using WS-* for "security plumbing" between differnet vendor products are less compelling, since the alternative is to use a proprietary interface. It’s worth noting that a number of standards said to be “vendor-driven” are primarily of interest to vendors. For example, another architect interviewed for this story was hands-on with WS-Security but unaware that WS-Trust plays a role in his implementation. Why? The WS-Trust protocol is spoken only between his security broker, VordelDirector, and his identity provider, Entrust (Profile, Products, Articles). The messages exchanged between his company and its Web services partner have nothing to do with WS-Trust, says Mark O’Neill, CTO of Vordel. “We and Entrust chose to use it because it’s a spec that we don’t have to work out ourselves,” he says. The WS-Security protocol used by the service end points and the WS-Trust protocol used by infrastructure components are “solving completely different problems -- it just so happens that both involve specs that begin with WS." http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/09/12/37FEsoaevolve_4.html 1:24:54 PM    comment []