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Market drivers for e-business defense technology

HEADNOTE

Everyone knows websites need better protection, but not much is being done to harden them. Will a carrot work, or will it take a stick?

Prospects for technologies that protect online businesses from external

attack have ignited high hopes, but this nascent market has been slow to develop. E-business defense technology developed mainly to resolve problems stemming from Web protocols exposing e-business sites and their back-end information systems to the Internet. These "firewall friendly" Web protocols-HTTP (carried over TCP port 80), and HTTPS (carried over TCP port 443), as well as derivatives such as SOAP and WebDAV, are transparent to firewalls, thus subjecting any application vulnerabilities to exploitation.

The list of product vendors tackling this problem from a variety of angles is long and lengthening. It includes, among others, (see "Technology Choices-A Primer," for category descriptions):

In addition, make sure to read these articles: