Jericho Forum IT Security Vendor Survey Reveals That Vendors are Preparing Products to Support Secure Collaboration in a De-Perimeterized Business World

SAN FRANCISCO and LONDON, May 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- Access Control, Authentication, and Compliance Top the List of the Most 
Important Solutions for Helping Organizations Resolve the Perimeter Erosion 
Problem

Jericho Forum, the international IT security thought-leadership group
dedicated to advancing secure business in a global open-network environment,
today released the results of a spot survey of 22 IT security vendors that
responded to questions about vendor preparedness to deliver security for
today's de-perimeterized network business model -- a model required to
support collaboration between customers, partners, vendors and their mobile
work forces. According to the respondents, vendors are listening to their
customers and reacting to the problem! Of the vendors that responded to the
survey, 67 percent intend to modify their products to deliver effective
security for the perimeter erosion problem. One vendor summed it up for the
remainder of the vendors: "While we do this explicitly already, we will
continue to find new ways in which to perform these tasks."

The survey uncovered that 45 percent of the vendors are being asked by
more than half of their customers to enhance existing products or build new
solutions to help them resolve the problem. Jericho Forum was the first
thought-leadership group to recognize that business drivers for global
operations over the Internet meant that once solid corporate "network
security" walls would tumble down, leaving valuable confidential data exposed
unless we adopt a new approach to securing our data. Composed of global
corporate CISOs, who collectively are responsible for global revenue
exceeding US$875 billion, and senior representatives from the vendor
community, members of the Jericho Forum have united to create a blueprint for
solutions to shore up security in the face of advancing perimeter erosion.

Respondents to the survey included representatives from Europe (73
percent) and the United States (37 percent). Focused on security products,
vendors ranged from large companies with 1,000 to 10,000 plus employees that
support a broad range of security products (53 percent) to small vendors with
less than 100 employees that support a single product (47 percent). Products
represented by these vendors include encryption data leakage prevention,
intrusion prevention, compliance authentication, access control, anti-virus,
secure client virtualization, vulnerability management and other types of IT
security products.

Top Survey Highlights

    -- Respondents believe access control is one of the most important 
       solutions that help customers resolve perimeter erosion problems. In 
       weighted rankings, access control came in number one, authentication 
       came in second, compliance third, data leak prevention and identity 
       management tied for fourth, encryption was fifth, intrusion prevention 
       sixth, and VPN came in seventh.
    -- Vendors are aware of the security concern enterprises have about the 
       erosion of their network perimeter: 45 percent of survey respondents 
       stated that more than half of their customers have requested 
       enhancements or solutions to resolve this problem.
    -- Vendors and enterprises are becoming increasingly more aware of the 
       de-perimeterization problem, but not enough is being done today to 
       protect corporate assets. When asked, only 21 percent of vendors polled 
       believed that less than half of their customers were running open 
       networks environments that enable secure collaboration and commerce -- 
       which still leaves too many enterprises vulnerable.
    -- The survey revealed that the primary reason why more products are not 
       available today is based on the state of the market, not a technical 
       decision. In weighted rankings, vendors identified the lack of 
       practical, scalable business models that support business on the 
       Internet as the number one reason they are not more aggressively 
       creating perimeter erosion solutions. The lack of incentives and design 
       drivers for tackling the open network environment ranked second; lack 
       of interoperable universal standards came in third; lack of a common 
       language to express perimeter erosion solution goals, requirements, 
       policies and solutions came in fourth; and having to bridge legacy 
       systems with Internet-accessible devices came in fifth.

As businesses enable more partners, vendors, mobile work forces, and
customers to collaborate online, it is even more critical for enterprises and
vendors to unite to solve the security gap that such collaboration creates.
The Jericho Forum is the catalyst for change that will continue to bring
Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial companies, and vendors together to
show organizations how to architect for safe business collaboration. A
special white paper on collaboration-oriented architectures is available for
download from Jericho Forum at http://www.opengroup.org/jericho/COA_v1.0.pdf.

To learn more about Jericho Forum, its members, and how to become a
member, go to http://www.opengroup.org/jericho/about.htm.

About Jericho Forum

Jericho Forum is the leading international IT security thought-leadership
association dedicated to advancing secure business in a global open-network
environment. Members include top IT security officers from multinational
Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial user companies, major information security
product vendors, government, and academic institutions. Working together,
members drive approaches and standards for a secure, boundaryless,
collaborative online business world.

Web site: http://www.opengroup.org/jericho/about.htm