XML Firewall -- Without the application coding -- ADTmag

XML Firewall -- Without the application coding

By Will Kilburn
December 2, 2003

XML Web services have been heavily prototyped in recent years, and some are ready to deploy. But new security concerns must be hurdled, and developers can't help but complain if they are sent back to the drawing board once more.

Poised as a solution is an XML Firewall from Reactivity. ''One of the things we're running into is project teams that have been building a set of services for deployment at a future date,'' said Reactivity CEO Glenn Osaka. ''And now what's happened is that they're ready to switch on and the security infrastructure people aren't ready.''

This, noted Osaka, is the problem addressed by the latest version of his company's flagship security product, the Reactivity 2300 Series XML Firewall, which is said to take security code out of the layer of application code and out of the hands of developers.

''Oftentimes, developers aren't clear on what's changed between a prior release and a current release,'' said Osaka. ''They just don't understand why something used to work and suddenly doesn't work any longer.''

Reactivity's director of marketing, Joelle Gropper Kaufman, adds that there are benefits in taking security out of app code long after projects are finished.

''The issues become who's going to define security policy, manage it and audit it? Do you want to be doing that in development code, and do you want developers having to implement that and manage it over time?'' said Kaufman. ''The general answer is no. Security standards have a lot of refinements; they're never just what they seem on paper.''

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