Check Point tackles extranet security

ATLANTA -- Early next year Check Point plans to introduce software that will make it easier to set up and make changes to business-to-business VPNs.

With Extranet Manager, customers will be able to define security parameters that control other business partners' access to a corporate VPN, for example. These parameters will then be enforced by a central security server.

Control of the VPN security policy is one-sided -- a party in an extranet can impose changes to protect its own VPN without the cooperation of the other parties, says Check Point Chairman and CEO Gil Schwed. "You are in charge of defining what is allowed on your [security] server, and once you change something about your server, it automatically gets distributed." This gives corporations the power to create and tear down extranet links easily with other businesses using Check Point's gear.

Schwed did not reveal many details of the product, but he outlined its broad features during an interview last week with Network World at NetWorld+Interop 2000. The company has not announced an extranet management product.

The problem enterprise customers face in setting up extranets is that they must allow other business entities to enter their corporate VPN yet maintain security. Each member of the extranet wants to share resources but also maintain its own security.

"Each needs to trust the other but trust the other only to a certain extent and not for the full set of [extranet] VPN policies," Schwed says. "It's not one entity that manages the security of an extranet."

Schwed says Extranet Manager could reside on a service provider's network or an enterprise site.

He says Check Point also is developing lightweight VPN and firewall software for handheld devices. Those products will let enterprise customers secure links between PDAs and enterprise resources. He would not say when this software would be ready.

Check Point: www.checkpoint.com

» posted by ITworld staff

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