6th phion summit concluded

Alpbach/Innsbruck, 27th May 2009. The sixth phion summit with 450 international participants came to an end yesterday. For three days security and network experts met in Alpbach (Tyrol) to discuss topical threatening scenarios, new technical approaches for realising more efficient security as well as the effects of the economic crisis on the industry.

In his keynote speech, Wieland Alge, CEO at phion, said: “Budgets are tight at the moment and something quite remarkable is happening in the world of IT security. It always used to be the small companies that envied the larger ones because of their infrastructures, but now the balance is turning. The large companies are learning from the small ones about how to make savings in IT security costs - for example with centralised management and unified threat management.”

Among the most important technology subjects discussed at the summit was the challenge of enabling secure network access for mobile devices and on averting attacks on web applications, which are on the rise and also usually targeted. As Wieland Alge comments: “The majority of targeted attacks is targeted at web applications these days. It doesn’t take much for four out of five web applications to be used as a gateway, in order to, for example, access databases.” So a protective system’s job must therefore be to enable companies to change and further develop their web applications quickly and dynamically without the IT security becoming a brake pad for business processes and product development.

The new products presented by phion include Secure ActiveSync and Kerberos Single-Sign-On-Integration for the web application firewall airlock. The company also provided an outlook for the upcoming netfence version 5.0 with an extended management platform. This will enable, among other things, the remote maintenance of faulty devices at distant locations whose connection to the phion Management Centre has been broken off by means of a backup operating system.