Breaking News - Security:

Forum, F5 Alliance To Offer Interoperable WS, Traffic Mgmt

Forum Systems Inc, a provider of trust management and threat protection Web services security solutions, announced it has joined F5 Networks' Technology Alliance Program. The partnership with F5, the leading provider of Application Traffic Management solutions, brings IP-based networking infrastructures and XML Web services security together. The technology alliance is centered on product interoperability with F5's application traffic management product, BIG-IP and Forum's S3A Web services security product family.

"For years, F5 Networks' Application Traffic Management solutions have helped leading enterprises to effectively build Web service architectures that have delivered tremendous value to their users. Via our Universal Inspection Engine, we have the ability to make precise traffic management decisions based on XML traffic, thus enabling our customers to fully realize the benefits of Web Services," said Jim Ritchings, vice president of business development at F5. "Our technology alliance with Forum Systems is yet another step in delivering on our promise of providing comprehensive and market-leading Web services security solutions, without requiring customers to rework their existing infrastructure."

According to leading industry analyst firms, companies of all sizes continue to attest that XML and Web services are becoming the dominant model for exchanging information and conducting electronic business transactions. ZapThink, LLC predicts that the Web services security market will be a $4.4 billion industry by 2006. According to market research firm IDC, XML will represent 65 percent of the total IT security market by 2006. Business and IT managers are now looking at data-level networking to get fine-grained control and visibility of the structured XML data that is moving across their networks and between internal and external applications.

"We're pleased to announce this technology alliance with F5 Networks," said Wes Swenson, president and CEO of Forum Systems. "The degree of information exposure posed by Web services is unprecedented as they cause a 'de-perimeterization' of the enterprise and raise the specter of unauthorized information access and new forms of attacks against business processes. A combined F5 and Forum solution will bring immediate benefits across enterprises who share information because the value is in the XML data exchanged, not in the packets."

Trustworthy, ubiquitous and robust Web services can only be achieved by combining security controls that are proactive, continuous and systematic throughout the life cycle of Web services. Forum Seamless Security Solutions Architecture (Forum S3A) for Web services are products and technology that extends and enhances existing applications and networking infrastructures with flexible data-level capabilities specifically designed for structured XML data sharing and Web services transactions.