[ISN] DARPA hires Network Associates to help secure next-gen 'Nets

From: mea culpa (jerichoat_private)
Date: Sun Dec 20 1998 - 01:06:27 PST

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    DARPA hires Network Associates to help secure next-gen 'Nets
    By Elinor Mills, IDG News Service, 12/16/98
    
    Network Associates, Inc. (NAI) yesterday announced that it is developing
    security protocols and products for the next generation of computer
    networks funded by the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects
    Agency (DARPA). 
    
     DARPA, which funded development of the Internet in the 1970s, is helping
    develop the next-generation Internet, which will be an overhaul of the
    current global network, said Terry Benzel, director of NAI Labs' Advanced
    Security Research Division.
    
     In the meantime, DARPA is also working on a program, dubbed "Active
    Networks," which is seen as an interim step towards the next-generation
    'Net, Benzel said. The program envisions improving today's Internet
    infrastructure to provide for more flexible and dynamic loading and
    routing, she said.
    
     Instead of today's static routers, an Active Network will feature
    networking nodes that will process packet headers and information and
    relay information around the Internet using executable smart packets, or
    "active agents," rather than static packets, Benzel explained. "So every
    piece of information flowing through the network carries with it all the
    information needed for it to be executed in the Internet," she said. 
    
     NAI has three contracts with DARPA for the Active Networks program. Under
    those contracts, NAI will develop: a security policy and working
    prototypes of an active network that knows how to move the dynamic
    information around; AMP software nodes that know how to receive the
    information; and new cryptography that will be needed to secure the new
    networks, Benzel said. 
    
     DARPA's Active Networks program has been under way for about a year and
    has two more years to go, she said. DARPA expects to demonstrate the proof
    of its concepts, but not its products in mid-1999. 
    
     NAI will use the technology it develops to create commercial products
    that could appear as early as mid- to late-1999, according to Benzel. "The
    results will feed into 'active security' as a product for NAI" down the
    road, she said. 
    
     The active security concept involves having different components of
    security technology work together, she explained. For instance, if an
    intrusion detection system notices a security breach, it could send a
    message to the firewall which could then shut down the gateway, log the
    event and notify the console operator, Benzel said.
    
     Most of the participants in DARPA's Active Networking program are
    universities, with the exception of NAI and GTE-BBN Internetworking, she
    added.
    
     For the past 10 years, DARPA has been contracting with Trusted
    Information Systems (TIS), which was acquired by NAI earlier this year,
    said Benzel. 
    
     As a result of a 1993 DARPA contract to investigate the ramifications of
    connecting private networks to a public data network, TIS invented the
    "fwtk" application proxy firewall toolkit, and later developed Gauntlet,
    the first commercial firewall, an NAI statement said. Four years later,
    DARPA awarded TIS several contracts to investigate the need for faster
    proxy firewalls. 
    
    
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