EXECUTIVE VIEWPOINT: A SECURE NETWORK PLATFORM FROM IBM

From talking with our customers and business partners, I know that many of you are embracing the concept of e-business. You’re getting the message that e-business—combining the power of your information technology systems with the broad reach of the Internet—can open up a world of new opportunities and help keep your business ahead of the competition.

As your interest in e-business grows, however, many of you are also expressing a keen interest in security. Security plays a major role in e-business. Digital signatures, for example, have helped make many kinds of electronic transactions possible, and more opportunities will continue to arise as new security technologies emerge.

Security is much more than just digital signatures, of course. Security is important to you because your business, as it evolves into an e-business, has to be absolutely safe from unwanted intrusion. As soon as a computer links to the Internet or even to intranets and extranets, it becomes visible to a wide audience and vulnerable to certain risks. As a result, you need security solutions that protect your business assets while helping you grow and move ahead. You need them, and IBM is the leader in delivering them.

Security has always been tightly woven into IBM’s e-business solutions, and many IBM customers are using secure e-business solutions today. For instance, Internet Operations Center (IOC), a leading Internet technology company located in Southfield, Michigan, uses IBM solutions to provide VPN and other secure network technology that helps its customers become successful, secure e-businesses. For the full story about IOC, see the last issue of eNetwork Connection (November 1998).

Security is one of the three pillars of a secure framework for e-business:

• Locate—Development and integration tools, like our SecureWay Network Directory offering
• Connect—Application server software, like our On-Demand Server, Host On-Demand, and Communications Server products
• Secure—Integrated elements for securing and managing the network, like our Firewall offering and public key infrastructure (PKI) technology as well as the IBM FirstSecure Integrated Solutions

Together, these integrated pillars represent the IBM Secure Network Platform, which offers a complete end-to-end infrastructure for e-business networks. Our solutions are policy-based, integrated, and comprehensive—and they can protect your entire network from one end to the other. We offer centralized security management and a secure environment in which you can develop applications for rapid deployment.

The Secure Network Platform, a key element within the Application Framework for e-business, enables you to minimize the risks and take advantage of exciting new opportunities. We think IBM offers the best, most comprehensive e-business strategy in the industry, and we’ll be enhancing it in the future. Keep watching us, and keep looking to IBM—the leader in e-business solutions.

Ed Harbour
IBM Director, Business Line Management, eNetwork Software

Introducing the Secure Network Platform

The Secure Network Platform, a point of integration for three network functions, enables fast and easy implementation of Web-based technologies and applications, thereby connecting customers, employees, and business partners with the information and services they need. The locate function provides the directory structure to identify available resources—both applications and data sets—and stores information about users, their preferences, and the groups with which they are associated. The connect function utilizes the information stored in the directory to determine the appropriate IP connection and the type of application a user will require. The secure function protects the network and application from unauthorized usage, detects intruders and viruses, and directs user application access control. The Secure Network Platform is available in a self-contained "thin-server" model or as an add-on module that plugs into existing LAN and Web servers, turning them into full-function secure networks. This simple access server is a modular network node that can be placed in branch offices, data centers, and campus connectivity closets, or used as an Internet gateway node. Individual units can be connected together to provide load balancing and fail-over support for high-availability requirements.