BindView Unveils Security Strategy for Microsoft .NET Web Services Infrastructure

Business Wire, May 15, 2002

Business Editors/High Tech Writers

Gartner Information Security Conference 2002

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 2002

Strategy to Include Software Solutions Aimed At Helping

Organizations Secure Their Web Services and to Facilitate

Customer/Partner Collaboration

BindView Corporation (NASDAQ:BVEW), a leading provider of IT security management solutions, unveiled today its Microsoft .NET Web Services Security Strategy, a comprehensive software initiative that leverages Microsoft's .NET technology to secure Web Services and the Microsoft platforms and applications on which they run.

BindView will help organizations meet the security requirements associated with collaborative computing by providing solutions that deliver customized role-based access control in conjunction with robust auditing capabilities. The roll out of this strategy underscores BindView's commitment to address the security needs of companies adopting the Microsoft .NET Web Services Infrastructure.

IT organizations tasked with enforcing company policies and industry best practices will take on new challenges with Web Services. BindView's .NET Web Services Security Initiative outlines the company's support for the .NET platform and BindView's efforts to offer comprehensive security software solutions to help manage security within the Microsoft .NET Web Services Infrastructure. BindView will deliver a proxy server that will consolidate access to all Web Services, enabling a central point for access control and auditing services without requiring any additional work on the part of Web Services application developers.

BindView's plans for securing the Microsoft .NET Web Services Infrastructure include the following features to be rolled out in the next 12-18 months:

- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) will enable IT administrators to grant users
access control to specific web services and functions based upon the role of
each individual, or group of users, within the organization. This will help
ensure that users have access to the widest variety of applications, but not to
information that should be out of their reach.

- Powerful Auditing Functionality will include new services to create a central
auditing log that will track all access to .NET Web Services. This feature will
include custom reporting and detailed analysis of the audit trail that is left
behind once a partner or customer engages with an organization's services.

- Comprehensive Vulnerability Assessment Capabilities will locate security
vulnerabilities in .NET Web Services and the servers that host them. Securing a
network requires knowing who and what has access to your network resources and
where they got access from. This feature will detect, correct, disable or
delete inappropriate access.

- Configuration Management for Web Servers will enable IT administrators to
identify servers that have not been configured according to best practices and
help bring the systems back into compliance. Ultimately, enabling new
technologies will drive up new complexities, controlling application and
platform standards will become a must.

- Customized, Definable Roles will allow BindView's customers to define and
tailor the roles assigned to their users on a case-by-case basis. This helps
enable organizations to create the most comprehensive - and effective -
security management programs for their specific organization.

- A Flexible, Dynamic User Interface will allow customers to quickly implement
and deploy BindView's new solutions for managing the .NET Web Services
Infrastructure with minimal training and no custom development required. A
technologically advanced and easy-to-navigate user interface will provide a
common security management Web "portal" across this and other BindView security
management solutions.

BindView will launch the first of these Microsoft .NET Web Services Infrastructure security products later this year, with additional products and updates unveiled in 2003. Support for Web Services from other providers and for other platforms will be announced at a later date.

"As customer demand begins to grow for Microsoft's .NET Web Services, security at the access point into the organization's enterprise will become a priority," said Chris Wilburn, director of Microsoft solutions at BindView. "Organizations adopting Microsoft's .NET technology and Web Services need to design comprehensive security strategies and leverage tools that complement this new collaborative computing environment. BindView's .Security Solution Portfolio and the new .NET Web Services Security Initiative will offer organizations customized tools to proactively manage security issues, while enabling them to more fully realize the value of .NET and Web Services advances."

BindView's .Security Solution portfolio brings together BindView's award-winning bv-Admin and bv-Control solutions for the Windows, Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange environments. The .Security Solution portfolio provides Windows system administrators and security professionals with software and services to help secure, automate and lower the cost of managing Windows-based platforms and underscores BindView's continued commitment to offering the most comprehensive security administration, configuration management and vulnerability assessment solutions.