Tuesday, 31 October 2006

Cenzic Debuts Enterprise ARC Application Security Assessment Solution

Cenzic has unveiled Hailstorm Enterprise Application Risk Controller (ARC), a product that aims to address application security assessment across the enterprise.

Protecting web applications is becoming a major pain point for enterprises of all sizes. Whether it's a small company doing business online or a large company handling all their customer transactions, web front-ends have become a must for businesses. Due to the open nature of web sites, hackers are exploiting the same interfaces that consumers use to exploit code to steal confidential information, Intellectual Property, or transfer money illegally. According to a recent Symantec Threat Report, 59% of the total vulnerabilities relate to web applications. In a recent CSI/FBI report on security, almost 100% of respondents had some kind of web incident, with 59% of respondents citing more than ten incidents.

"Global enterprises like large financial services firms may have thousands of customer-facing applications that are vulnerable to network-borne attacks. Many of these applications were built in part long before these threats were understood," said Peter Christy, principal analyst at Internet Research Group. "Much of the security focus to date has been in providing desktop and network gateway security; however, as the attackers are increasingly criminally motivated, many of the attacks are happening at the application level, where the attack masquerades as a legitimate user and attempts to hijack a transaction and access information. The impact of such attacks can have serious financial impact to the organisation and to the individuals whose information has been stolen", he continued.

According to Cenzic, Hailstorm Enterprise ARC addresses critical issues in application security. They include:

• Web Interface
• Intelligent Dashboard
• Application Portfolio Status
• Hailstorm Application Risk Metric (HARM)
• Application Discovery
• Role-based Visibility
• Messaging for Workflow Support
• Integrated Reporting
• Web Services Support
• Ajax Support