CA set to tackle Web services security

CA is readying software designed to help secure and manage systems using Web-services software.

The product, expected by the middle of this year, will fuse the company's eTrust Transaction Minder and Unicenter Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) software, and will add new features to enhance XML security, says Toby Weiss, senior vice president and general manager of CA's Security Management business unit.

Code-named Project SOA, the software has been in development for nine months. CA will probably work with other companies to deliver it in a preconfigured hardware appliance, Weiss says. "We're definitely going to have a software version, and we're working with some hardware partners now," he says.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

CA is readying software designed to help secure and manage systems using Web-services software.

The product, expected by the middle of this year, will fuse the company's eTrust Transaction Minder and Unicenter Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) software, and will add new features to enhance XML security, says Toby Weiss, senior vice president and general manager of CA's Security Management business unit.

Code-named Project SOA, the software has been in development for nine months. CA will probably work with other companies to deliver it in a preconfigured hardware appliance, Weiss says. "We're definitely going to have a software version, and we're working with some hardware partners now," he says.

CA has already integrated its Web-services products with appliances from such vendors as Layer 7 Technologies and Forum Systems.

With companies beginning to bring Web services online, customers are looking for tools that can help them thwart potential attacks and ensure that the Web services are used only by authorized users and applications, says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with ZapThink.

"The Unicenter WSDM product is a reasonably mature product for Web-services management, and Transaction Minder was gaining some traction in the Web-services security space at the time that CA acquired Netegrity," Bloomberg says. "These are the two leading SOA products that CA offers, so it makes sense for them to be together."

CA completed its $400 million purchase of software vendor Netegrity in November 2004 and has been working since then to integrate the company's identity-management products with the rest of its product line.

Project SOA fits into CA's broad plan to extend its management products to help IT managers set security policies, Weiss says.

"Web services are coming on the scene in a major way. All companies are implementing them in some form or another. Even if they don't know it, they're buying software off the shelf that's implementing Web services."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.