Infosec: Security progress goes on show

London's security show promises a raft of announcements from hardware and software vendors

The Infosecurity Europe event has started in London, with around 100 new product announcements scheduled for tasks ranging from threat management to user authentication.

Among the vendors with new offerings will be Kaspersky Lab, which will launch Anti-Virus 6.0 and Internet Security 6.0, and demonstrate the beta version of Kaspersky Anti-Virus Mobile.

Meanwhile, security event management specialist ExaProtect will announce version 2.7 of its flagship Security Management Solution (SMS), designed to automate the tracking of and response to security events in business applications such as SAP, Oracle and Siebel as well as bespoke systems.

SMS 2.7 will also let firms customise security levels and profiles in their systems according to changing daily needs and specific security threats, according to ExaProtect.

Also at the event, antivirus firm Sophos will release details of its recent research into web-based threats, which will show that 70 percent of business users are still concerned most by viruses and hacking attacks, while 18 percent are most worried about employee fraud.

"There is obviously still a lot of concern about the malware threat, but internal threats are often most difficult to detect because they come in through the front door, [not through the] web or email connection," said Sophos's Graham Cluley. "You must be careful about who you're doing work with – do your partners go to as much care as you [when vetting] employees?"

Accenture's Stuart Okin, formerly Microsoft UK's chief security officer, told IT Week that while the number of exhibitors at the event is growing every year, many are now smaller, younger companies innovating in specialist areas.

"This benefits the industry because innovation helps [firms] stay one step ahead of the malware writers," Okin said. "But if companies become reliant on buying multiple products from multiple vendors, without thinking of how to integrate them, they may lose control of [their] security systems."

Hoping to catch attention at the event is Australian security vendor Tier-3, which has upgraded its Huntsman threat management system to version 4.5 and will launch it for the first time in the UK.

Tier-3 chief technology officer Geoff Sweeney said, "The key differentiator [for Huntsman] is the ability to detect both known attacks and unknown attacks automatically. We're aiming it at large corporations and government departments with, say, 1,000 users, but it will scale all the way up to hundreds of thousands."

Sweeney said a dual-processor system would be the minimum spec on which to deploy Huntsman but added that such a system, "could run a 3,000-user organisation".

Meanwhile, GeoTrust will unveil a new two-factor user authentication system, which integrates digital certificates with smartcards or USB tokens. GeoTrust's True Credentials Enterprise ID lets firms deploy tokens or smartcards to authenticate staff at login, but can also integrate a digital certificate. This allows a user to digitally sign and encrypt their emails within Outlook, according to GeoTrust.

GeoTrust marketing director Steve Waite said the system combines local admin tools with a managed service to certify credentials online. The product costs £15 per seat for 1,000 users, falling to £6 per seat for larger deployments.