DataPower, Reactivity add to their XML security line

Amid the growing corporate interest in Web services-based infrastructures, DataPower and Reactivity this week will introduce upgrades designed to help users boost XML security.

Amid the growing corporate interest in Web services-based infrastructures, DataPower and Reactivity this week will introduce upgrades designed to help users boost XML security.

DataPower will ship Version 3.0 of the firmware for its XS40 XML Security Gateway and XA35 XML Accelerator. The upgrade, designed to make DataPower appliances simpler to configure and manage, adds enhancements to XML schema validation, XPath queries for field-level security and boosts security for XML messages with attachments.

Reactivity will release Gateway D, a desktop appliance that delivers an XML firewall test environment for developers, and Gatekeeper, a free software plug-in for application or Web servers that prevents unauthorized access to Web services from within the internal corporate network. The Gatekeeper works with Reactivity’s XML Firewall, a perimeter appliance that controls external access and blocks malicious attacks.

“Users can have internal attacks on Web services just like they can have attacks from the outside,” says Randy Heffner, an analyst with Forrester Research. Typically those attacks take the form of malformed messages or malicious XML code inserted into messages that are based on the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). “The Gatekeeper gives you security capabilities for the application, and there is no way a rogue message can get in,” he says.

The Gatekeeper ensures that the Reactivity XML Firewall has issued a valid security assertion, based on the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), and included a digital signature on every SOAP message. The Gatekeeper works with other SAML-enabled authorization engines such as those from IBM Tivoli, Netegrity, Oblix and RSA Security, and with Web services management products from Actional and Amberpoint.

The Gateway D desktop appliance supports HTTP, XML, RPC requests and parameter passing, and Web services standards WS-Security 1.0 and SAML 1.0 and 1.1. It lets companies use a Reactivity XML Firewall during application development without having to purchase a $50,000 license. Gateway D costs $5,000.

DataPower is linking its security hardware appliance with application development environments. The 3.0 firmware will include integration with the Eclipse open source development suite and IBM WebSphere Studio.

DataPower and Reactivity products compete with Westbridge Technology, Vordel and Sarvega.