Forum Systems Releases Version 6.1 of Forum Sentry SOA Gateway with Advanced Policy Handling System

August 3, 2006; 09:37 AM
Forum Systems, provider of Web services and SOA security infrastructure for XML acceleration, threat protection and trust management, announced Version 6.1 of its award-winning Sentry SOA Gateway. With this latest version of the product, Forum introduces an integrated Policy Handling System (PHS) that offers enterprises a highly scalable process of designing and enforcing multi-faceted policies across their SOA applications to efficiently comply with enterprise governance requirements.

Mature SOA's must be designed using services that can be added, removed and revised with near-zero operational disruption. Unfortunately the current practice of hard-coding policies into the application makes changes such as adding a new security or transport protocol difficult and expensive to accommodate, especially as businesses strive to be agile enough to rapidly adjust to changing conditions. The Forum Sentry 6.1 PHS overcomes these challenges to today's SOA environments with an integrated mechanism to manage policies across the life cycle:

-- Author and publish security, mediation and application integration policies

-- Disseminate, revise and roll back configurations and changes without disruption

-- Consistently enforce policies using optimized XML processing

-- Monitor in real-time and at run-time policy compliance across the SOA

"This latest 6.1 release is unique in that it is able to handle a wide-array of policy requirements that go well beyond security. By decoupling the specification, enforcement and revision of policies from the application core, the Forum Policy Handling System allows an enterprise to manage a cross section of SOA-specific rules and constraints that span IT, corporate and regulatory requirements," said Walid Negm, vice president of marketing for Forum Systems. "By building a stand-alone system for policy management we were able to build a robust Web Service management that performs for the customers that are looking to deploy a SOA that is policy-driven," Negm added.

Forum Sentry is deployed in more than 170 customer sites, all which demand stable and secure SOA solutions. In a recent report from industry analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates entitled, "SOA Market and Products 2006: Current State, Future Directions," Forum was named as "the leading security vendor in the SOA security space."

Forum Sentry 6.1 Policy Handling System (PHS) introduces these capabilities to support scalable, composed and federated SOA applications:

Policy Clustering and Synchronization: By separating policies from the core services, policy makers are free to evolve and adapt their constraints independently. There is also a need to disseminate changes and additions across policy enforcement points. By organizing endpoints as logical collections for enforcement, an administrator is able to publish policies faster and more accurately.

Remote WSDL Publishing: Allows organizations to deploy policies that are attached to Web service Description Language (WSDL) documents and publish them to a central location. It also allows for staging so that the individual WSDL policies can pushed to a centralized location and then deployed to the enforcement points.

Global Policy Processing: Administrators can describe XML and Web Service security, mediation or integration tasks that can be re-used across endpoints. Groups of functions can be assigned to execute at a global level (for all Web Services), at the WSDL level (for a specific set of Web Services), or at an operational level (for a specific Web Service call).

Entitlement and Domain Based Administration: This feature allows organizations to segment administration views based on roles and responsibilities. Policy rights can be using existing access control systems.

Other capabilities in Forum Sentry 6.1 include advancements in SOAP Fault Correlation; SOAP Attachment Inspection and Processing; Transactional Rate Throttling; and Run-Time WS-I Enforcement.

Forum Sentry 6.1 is available immediately for $60,000 depending on hardware or software configurations.

About Forum Systems

Trustworthy, ubiquitous and robust Web Services can only be achieved by combining security controls that are proactive, always on and systematic. Forum Seamless Security Solutions Architecture (Forum S3A(TM)) is an adaptive approach to building security minded service-oriented applications and data-level networks using life-cycle solutions including vulnerability management, testing systems, firewalls and gateways. Forum products are available as software, PCI-card and appliance options and comply with government requirements including CheckPoint OPSEC Certification, FIPS Certification, Common Criteria EAL 4+ (in process) and JITC DoD PKI Certification. Forum Systems is an active a member of OASIS and WS-I helping mature standards such as WS-I Basic Profiles, SAML and WS-Security. Customers can benefit from Forum technology that is bundled with market-leading products: Microsoft ISA Server 2004, NetContinuum NC-1000 WSE, Crossbeam Systems, Breach Security and Network Engines NS6300X. For more information on adaptive solutions for Web Services security please visit http://www.forumsys.com.

Forum Systems, Inc. is the Leader in Web Services and SOA Security(TM) infrastructure with a comprehensive suite of XML acceleration, trust management and threat protection solutions for the automated Web. Forum Systems' flexible hardware, software and embedded products make vibrant business communications possible by actively protecting XML data and Web Services across networks and business boundaries. Forum's products have been chosen by over 150 Fortune 1000 industry leaders and are winners of Network Computing Magazine's Well-Connected 2006 and 2004 Awards and Product of the Year 2004 Award, Network Computing Magazine's Editor's Choice 2003 Award, Network Magazine's Product of the Year 2003 Award and most recently "Most Outstanding Product of the Year 2006" Well-Connected Award by CMP Media. Forum XWall Web Services Firewall was also the industry's only XML Firewall selected by InfoWorld LEADERBOARD 2004. Visit Forum at http://www.forumsys.com/.