Commercial business involving substantial exchange of value is increasingly moving over electronic channels. This includes transactions such as consumer purchases or stock trades done over the Internet, business-to-business supply chains over extranets, or intra-divisional transactions within a company flowing over the company's network. This trend is being driven by opportunities for both new revenue sources as well as the cost-reduction inherent in reducing manual or paper-based workflow.

These new opportunities can yield substantial returns to the business. At the same time, the movement of payments or confidential information on-line poses new security risks (and thus costs) to individuals and companies alike that can seriously reduce these returns. While no real business is possible on-line without hardened, robust security, security is by definition a lagging technology. You can't conceive or fight security threats for technologies that don't yet exist, nor is it realistic to think that design teams can conceive every possible attack at the time they develop a new technology. Instead, security technologies evolve as threats appear to new technical approaches to transacting business are implemented.

This has implications for both high-tech companies and their customers. For high-tech firms, security represents numerous new opportunities to build products that can solve a variety of security problems - like perimeter security, authentication of identities, access control, and mobile security, among many others. For their customers, on-line security represents a continual challenge that must be considered as they implement new eBusiness technologies and processes. On the one hand, companies must carefully evaluate their on-line security policies against the newest, most probable attacks they could be subject to. They must then evaluate and implement both processes and technologies that hinder those attacks in a cost effective manner. On the other hand, most companies do not have the resources to maintain the security braintrust needed to conitnually build and deliver the latest security solutions that are both theoretically valid and technically feasible.

r:eThought understands the needs of both the companies building security technologies and the customers deploying them. This is because we have brought together a team of security experts who have been both developers and deployers of security technologies. Our team consists of some of the leading individuals in on-line security worldwide, who have each spent over 20 years conceiving, developing, deploying, and maintaining security solutions to cover almost every conceivable on-line security need a company may have. Moreover, our team has proven itself uniquely capable of conceiving solutions that are both theoretically valid and technically feasible - a link between theory and practice that most security practitioners cannot deliver.

• Rapid development of security solutions in both hardware and software


• Security policy audits and development of on-line security policies


• Security risk/threat analysis


• Unbiased evaluation of security products and product designs


• Security protocol development and analysis


• FIPS 140 and Common Criteria compliance testing


• Design and implementation of perimeter protection


• Development and deployment of security architectures for:
  
  
  • Transactional systems
    
  • On-line self-service platforms
    
  • Mobile platforms
    
  • B2B networks
    
  • Browser-based applications
    
  • Zero-footprint clients
    
  • Embedded hardware platforms
    

In conjunction with r:eThought's marketing practices, the on-line security practice also supports:

• Evaluations of markets for security products
  
  
• Development of customer requirements and MRDs for product development
  
  
• Development of business plans for products, including pricing and channel strategies
  
  
• Development and implementation of product launches, including product positioning, collateralization, sales training, and media planning.
  
  

r:eThought is thus an adjunct organization with comprehensive skills in on-line security you can depend on to extend the capabilities of your product or security team. You can draw on all our capabilities, or only those you specifically need. Either way, you gain access to world-class security technologists and marketers who can help make your business successful.

Feel free to call us at 831-659-7384 to learn more about our capabilities, or email us at security@rethought.net.