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San Francisco, CA - May 18, 2005 - Members
of the international IT security pressure group, Jericho
Forum, gathered in Cincinnati, OH on Thursday, May 5 thru
Friday, May 6 in order to make further progress with their
Vision and Mission (http://www.opengroup.org/tech/jericho/)
by engaging more US-based corporations.
A striking outcome of the meeting was a plea for organizations
to accept the fact that their information security perimeter
has already gone, and for Chief Information Security Officers
to collaborate on the development of a security architecture
and design approach that the Jericho Forum calls "de-perimeterization".
Presenters from a diverse range of industries, represented
by Boeing, Procter & Gamble, BP, and Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein, described their efforts to work with the vendor
community to achieve open standards that will enable secure,
Boundaryless Information Flow™ across organizations.
They claim that the need for such standards has been growing
for many years as organizations seek to exploit the business
potential of the Internet, while at the same time tackling
the increasing problem of the disappearing perimeter.
Also, they believe that over the next few years, as technology
and business continue to align closer to an open, Internet-driven
networked world, the current security mechanisms that protect
business information will not scale to meet the increasing
volumes of transactions and data of the future.
They are calling for a new approach; to move from the traditional
network perimeter down to the individual networked computers
and devices - and ultimately to the level of the data being
sent over the networks. This process has been described as
"re-perimeterization" followed by ultimate "de-perimeterization".
"The meeting in Cincinnati demonstrated the high level of
interest amongst North American organisations for the Jericho
Forum's vision, and that the issues raised are of global
concern. Many US representatives are actively developing
products and standards relevant to the Jericho Forum, so
I'm looking forward to a fruitful collaboration," said Andrew
Yeomans of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a Europe-based
investment bank with international reach.
"I was delighted that our first open meeting in the
US brought together such a large and balanced mix of both
end customers and vendors, members and non-members; all of
whom universally confirmed the relevance of the Jericho
Forum vision", said Paul Dorey of BP.
"We got to grips with some hard questions during the
meeting, including how vendors could help their customers
break out of narrow security implementations to unprecedented
wide-scale security", said Ian Dobson, The Open Group's
forum director.
Achievements to date include delivery of outline scenarios,
from which the Jericho Forum has derived a list of essential
technologies and standards that are sufficiently available
to be defined as part of the Jericho solution space within
the next six months, and a second list of required technologies
that will take longer to define because of a lack of mature
open standards or proven technology solutions.
The Jericho Forum aims to drive and influence development
of security standards that will meet future business needs
for secure Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
These standards will facilitate the secure interoperation
of ICT to support collaboration and commerce over open networks,
within and between organizations, based on a security architecture
and design approach entitled de-perimeterization. Globally,
more than fifty blue-chip user organizations, from all sectors,
are working together in order to find a solution and numerous
security product suppliers keen to understand the problem
space have joined them. The Open Group hosts the Jericho
Forum.
The Open Group is a vendor-neutral and technology-neutral
consortium, which drives the creation of Boundaryless Information
Flow- that will enable access to integrated information within
and between enterprises based on open standards and global
interoperability. The Open Group works with customers, suppliers,
consortia and other standard bodies. Its role is to capture,
understand and address current and emerging requirements,
establish policies and share best practices; to facilitate
interoperability, develop consensus, and evolve and integrate
specifications and open source technologies; to offer a comprehensive
set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of
consortia; and to operate the industry's premier certification
service. Further information on The Open Group can be found
at http://www.opengroup.org.
Note to editors: Boundaryless Information Flow is a trademark
of The Open Group.
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