By Rachel Chalmers
Buoyed by the imminent release of new versions of ACE/Server and SecurID, executives for Security Dynamics Technologies Inc say that by concentrating on the authentication market ,they have avoided the pitfalls faced by their counterparts at Secure Computing Corp and Network Associates Inc. With e-commerce driving increasing demand for all forms of network security, it’s hard to see quite how Network Associates could have lost almost $200m in its last quarter – making Secure Computing’s $20m loss look almost conservative in comparison. Little wonder that Security Dynamics is crowing over its own modest gain.
Merritt Maxim, product manager for SecurID, points out that the token authentication technology has 5 million users worldwide, representing a 60-70% share of the market for such devices. ACE/Server is also finding new markets, he says. ACE/Server has traditionally been seen as a remote access solution. What’s happening in last eighteen months is that we have seen it moving beyond remote access and into protecting NT domains. A company might require strong authentication for access to its law department, IBM mainframe, database or web server. The concept of a network perimeter is gradually eroding. As less trusted entities – suppliers and customers – are given access to internal networks, there is no longer any safe place behind the firewall. Strong authentication is an attractive means of securing corporate data.
So what has happened to Secure and NAI? Maxim believes the answer lies not in what they have not done but in what Security Dynamics has done. We have maintained a real strong and continued focus, he told ComputerWire. Network Associates thought it could do it all – anti-virus, firewalls. That’s not easily possible. Secure Computing made acquisitions of different kinds of vendors and content, and now they’re trying to pull it all together. We really focussed on SecurID business, and put our effort and initiative behind that product. The payoff is SecurID 2.0, with better deployment and installation, an automated login process for web environments and a freshly launched rapid token assignment and distribution service. As for ACE/Server 4.0, Maxim says it’s ready to be: a mission critical application, essential to how companies do business.
