Novell raising security profile

PROVO, UTAH - CEO Jack Messman wants Novell to be known for its security offerings, which means a team of developers has been hired to rescue the company's dormant BorderManager product from the scrap heap and enhance its other authentication and access software.

While the move has customers applauding, industry experts question whether Novell can compete head-to-head with more established security leaders.

The struggling network vendor shelved BorderManager last year to the chagrin of users who say the Internet access and authentication product, though miserably outdated, is one of the best. Novell will release a new version of BorderManager in April the company says will revitalizes the product - last revised in 1999 - and make it a linchpin of the company's security suite that was released last month.

This bundle, called Secure Access, provides single sign-on capabilities, user authorization and authentication to applications, databases and platforms. The bundle includes six other products: SecureLogin, iChain, eDirectory, Novell Modular Authentication Services (NMAS), Novell Directory Services Authentication Services (NDS-AS) and Novell Account Manager (NAM).

SecureLogin provides single sign-on capability for Windows, Web and host applications; iChain allows authentication into the network from outside networks; eDirectory organizes and stores individual identity information and access rights; NMAS enables biometric, smart card, digital certificates, tokens and proximity card authentication; and NDS-AS and NAM synchronize user information from other operating systems into eDirectory.

Greg Bernard, a financial analyst for Midwest Capital Markets in Kansas City, Mo., says the focus is right. "It is an excellent idea," Bernard says. "Novell is on the right track, especially with what we've seen with viruses and other network intrusions in the last year. If the company can provide secure networking on the Internet, extranet and intranet, that's a tremendous market for them to go for."

Users say security is a natural extension to Novell's NetWare, GroupWise, ZENworks and Portal Services products. "By being a directory service vendor, Novell by default is a security company," says Rocco Esposito, CTO of window-covering manufacturer Hunter Douglas in Upper Saddle River, N.J.

Esposito says that while the security focus is good, Novell shouldn't try to fill in the gaps by developing products, but should acquire them from vendors such as Symantec or McAfee.

Novell's Secure Access bundle is strong in single sign-on, metadirectory services and password management capabilities, but lacks antivirus, intrusion detection, auditing and centralized administration software, observers say. "Intrusion detection is fast becoming an absolute must for network security, and soon the BorderManager firewall product will be seen as lacking if it doesn't include an [intrusion-detection system]," says Ron Diebert, network and systems manager for the Baltimore County Government in Towson, Md.

Competition for Novell's Secure Access is also broad, but so is the market. IDC expects sales of authentication, authorization and administration software will grow from $2.8 billion in 2000 to $9.4 billion by 2005. Single sign-on products, of which Novell holds a 30% market share, will represent a significant portion of the market, IDC predicts. Com-puter As-soc-iates' eTrust leads the overall security software market with 15.5% of sales, followed by IBM/Tivoli Systems' SecureWay with 11.2%.

There are a number of software companies with specialized products that could undercut Novell's security push, including Net-egrity's Secure Relationship Management single sign-on product, NetIQ's Administration Suite and Cache-Flow's Server Ac-celerator proxy cache appliance.

Meanwhile, Novell developers are working on a version of BorderManager that starts to bring it up to snuff with other products. They will add Web-based configuration of packet filters, virus pattern filtering, a client for Windows XP and Millennium Edition, and a personal firewall to Version 3.7.

Users, who realize that protecting a directory and its user identity and access rights should be the primary function of any security product, say these changes are long overdue.

Even though "BorderManager's key strength compared with other firewall, proxy, VPN software has always been its directory integration, the current version was starting to lag behind other vendors' [product] features," says Michael Ducharme, IT manager for the Anokiiwin Training Center in Winnipeg, Canada. "Also, I was concerned that BorderManager 3.6 configuration and management would still be done via the aging [DOS-like] console interface, while administration for all other Novell software has since moved to [the Web]."

For the foreseeable future, BorderManager will remain NetWare-based, although future versions will remove its dependency on NDS eDirectory and work with any Lightweight Directory Access Protocol-compliant directory, Novell says. The company also says that buyers of security suites often don't purchase every component and therefore may not mind that BorderManager only works on NetWare servers. A customer may choose to replace BorderManager with a firewall from Check Point Software or a single sign-on product from Netegrity.

Some users even say it's not necessary to port BorderManager to other operating systems' platforms.

"The functionality of BorderManager is appliancelike and in an appliance it really doesn't matter what the base [operating system] is," says Chip DiComo, manager of global information systems for transportation firm Hellman Worldwide Logistics in Miami. A BorderManager server could easily be placed in a Windows NT/2000 or Unix network as an edge device, where it would provide firewall, VPN or packet filtering services, DiComo says.