INTEROP - Fear and loathing at Interop

09.05.2005
Von Kevin McKean

?What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas? may be the rule for gamblers and dance club denizens, but I hope you?ll forgive my passing along a few newsworthy items from the Interop show in that dusty desert outpost.

Expanding government regulations continue to drive IT spending, as companies scramble to stay ahead of deadlines. HIPAA, for one, came to bear in April, requiring health-care organizations to encrypt all patient information sent electronically. Thus, for anti-spam/anti-virus vendors, the focus has shifted from scanning inbound mail to checking outbound messages for compliance. Mycom Group?s mailMax, for example, automatically encrypts any message that includes a patient record number or other patient-identifying information.

Security everywhere. Cisco?s Adaptive Security strategy, unveiled by CEO John Chambers, ties together all the elements of corporate security -- anti-spam/anti-virus, firewall, intrusion detection, and so on -- into a single, comprehensive package for data, voice, and video. And, 3Com?s acquisition of TippingPoint has given it a fast, network-centric, multicomponent security solution. Behavioral monitoring, integral to both of these initiatives, continues to make strides -- particularly against the recent spyware scourge. ?Even without knowing the spyware?s signature,? explains Tim McCormick, vice president of marketing at Lancope, a leading NBAD (network behavior anomaly detection) vendor, ?We can detect and stop suspicious activity, like communications that happen even when your PCs are idle.?

Wireless is fast becoming essential to corporate IT, as new standards such as WiMax loom, and older ones such as Wi-Fi come of age. One facet of the wireless realm, location detection, made its increasing sophistication known at the show: Cisco introduced a location appliance, and Symbol Technologies emphasized the importance of location awareness in network optimization and security. Particularly fascinating for me has been the ongoing war with rogue networks that spring up in and around the enterprise. One vendor waging battle, Network Chemistry, offers a solution that disables wireless intruders by listening for evidence of rogue connections to corporate devices, posing as a party to the intruders? conversations, and then spoofing a ?disconnect? instruction.

Finally, sincere apologies to those turned away from our first SOA Executive Forum in San Jose, Calif., last week. We had to cut off registration a week early because so many people signed up that we were in danger of violating fire codes. As of this writing, a few spots remain for the companion eventin New York next week. But if we?re unable to accommodate you this spring, rest assured we?ll announce additional up-to-the-minute SOA-focused sessions later this year.

Kevin McKean is CEO and editorial director of InfoWorld.