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Groove Networks Announces Role In Newly Announced Homeland Security Information Network

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A public demonstration of the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) will occur Thursday at the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.

Marking the one-year anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security, Ridge said HSIN will expand upon the Joint Regional Information Exchange System (JRIES) that includes Groove Workspace as a core component for real-time, secure, intra- and inter-agency collaboration. Last year, Groove Workspace obtained the first Department of Defense (DoD) certification for interoperability with version 2.0 of the Defense Collaboration Tool Suite (DCTS).

Ridge said HSIN will be expanded to “all 50 states, five territories, tribal governments, and 50 major urban areas” and eventually to the private sector so it can coordinate preparedness efforts with government officials.

The software provides secure communication across insecure networks, is self-synchronizing, supports on- and off-line use, and employs a “web of trust” user authentication model.

More info: http://www.groove.net/release.cfm?pagename=press_feb26_2004

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Xerox Researchers Unveil New Document Management Technology

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The unnamed technology — Xerox refers to it as a categorizing tool — is available now, and can be licensed by enterprises that want to incorporate it into existing document systems, as well as by third-party software vendors in the document management, customer relationship management, and information retrieval markets, said Xerox.

The Xerox tool, said Eric Gaussier, a researcher at the Grenoble facility, uses a hierarchical model able to understand the dependency between multiple categories, unlike so-called “flat” search and retrieval tools which treat each category separately.

More info: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040226S0008

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ISS Unveils Web Content, Spam Filtering Software

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The pair, both software-based, include Proventia Web Filter, a content filtering package for Web gateways, and Proventia Mail Filter, an anti-spam filtering agent also deployed at the gateway.

Web Filter relies on a database of more than 20 million Web sites and some 2.6 billion individual pages, all categorized under labels such as online shopping and erotic content. Companies use this database, and a set of customizable rules, to define what their employees can access, when they can surf to sites, and the enforcement actions taken if workers try to reach forbidden content.

Both packages are available now under Cobion’s OrangeBox brand, and will ship under ISS’s own Proventia brand name in the second quarter.

ISS also plans to wrap the new software into hardware-based appliances — its Proventia family is primarily appliance-based — in the second quarter of 2004.

More info: http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040225S0007

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Cybersecurity vendors form policy advocacy group

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Introduced at security software maker RSA’s ongoing conference in San Francisco, the group has been christened the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA) and will be headed by Paul Kurtz, a former special assistant to the president who has worked on technology issues for the White House’s Homeland Security Council.

Among the 12 companies represented in the organization are security specialists such as Check Point Software, Computer Associates International, Entrust, Internet Security Systems, Network Associates, Symantec and RSA. The overriding goal of CSIA would be to gather input from leading cybersecurity providers and create initiatives for proposals to fellow technology vendors and government regulators alike. The group will be broken up into four committees that address the association’s major areas of interest.

Although Microsoft and other information technology leaders were not asked to be directly involved with the organization, Kurtz said it would be critical to generate participation from such companies in order to gain support for CSIA measures.

More info: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5165204.html

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Banks falling behind on Basel II

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Implementation is due in 2007, but requires that banks are using Basel compliant systems and data for several years before then.

The most widely perceived benefit is an improved credit rating system, followed by improved management of operational risk. A reduction in capital requirements was only the fourth most highly rated benefit.

Amongst UK banks, progress is generally greater – but they have concerns around the cost of implementing Basel, lack of IT flexibility, and uncertainty over how the regulator will be assessing the robustness of the systems they have developed. Globally, around 10 percent of banks are still establishing their Basel teams – and in the Asia Pacific region this climbs to as high as 22 percent. Only eight percent of banks have reached the testing and validation phase of their project on credit risk (although this rises to 15 percent in the Americas).

While 46 percent of banks have reached the systems modelling stage or further on credit risk, only 33 percent have done so on operational risk. Banks are also generally planning to take a more advanced approach to credit risk than operational risk – over a quarter are intending to take the most advanced approach to credit risk, while only 11 percent plan to do so on operational risk.

Barriers
The cost of complying with Basel was seen as the biggest barrier – perhaps not surprisingly, as half of respondents said that their total Basel budget was less than $1 million. Other widely cited concerns were lack of time, lack of data for operational losses, inflexibility of existing IT systems (a concern in Europe especially) and, in the Asia Pacific region primarily, a shortage of Basel experts. Concerning Europe, Jane Leach commented “Whilst European banks are relatively ahead of the pack, they cannot afford to be complacent.

More info: http://continuitycentral.com/news0980.htm

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Sarbanes-Oxley Doesn’t Worry Most IT Managers

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“Sarbanes-Oxley is asking companies to make sure they have documenting procedures in place,” said Aberdeen’s Christa Degnan in an interview. “Some respondents indicated that SOX compliance prompted changes in their supply-management strategies and operations, but no corresponding increases in their IT budgets,” she noted. A few respondents, representing about 10 percent of those polled in the survey, said SOX had no impact whatsoever on their supply-chain organizations.

What about the one-third who said SOX will have an impact on their IT and supply-chain operations? Aberdeen found that, of the one-third considering upgrading IT operations to comply with SOX, more than 40 percent were considering beefing-up contract-management and supply-chain analytics functions.

More info: http://www.securitypipeline.com/news/18200145;jsessionid=CQYMSM0OSFI3GQSNDBGCKHQ

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