Extranets Reach the Spotlight

Standards-based security and virtual private networks open up intranets to electronic commerce.

Pete Loshin

In the world of face-to-face business, you can invite customers and business partners into your shop without giving them a key to the executive offices. Extranets give you the same opportunity to open up information and systems on your intranet to outsiders without putting confidential data and mission-critical applications at risk.

The key technologies that make extranets viable offer nothing new except the way they're put together: strong authentication and strong cryptography, the deployment of virtual private networks (VPNs ), and the use of distributed-comput ing architectures and special-purpose products that permit electronic commerce on top of the extranet infrastructure.

Extranet security comes in the form of standards-based authentication, encryption, and digital signatures. RSA Data Security offers tools such as JSafe (for Java), BSafe (for C++), and SMail (for S/MIME-enabling messaging products) and licenses its algorithms for encryption and cryptographic hashing. Many vendors are adopting the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF's) Secure IP (IPSEC) standard for virtual private networking.

VPN products encrypt and authenticate traffic among networks and between individuals and remote networks. Formerly a specialty product often bundled into firewalls, such as those from Raptor Systems and Check Point Software, VPN capabilities are now available wrapped inside products as mainstream as Compaq's Microcom 6000 series remote-access concentrators, Intel' s routers, and Microsoft's Windows NT 4.0.

Distributed computing, whether by building a front end to legacy data through a Sun-approved Java/JavaBeans/IIOP/CORBA approach or by using the Microsoft-blessed ActiveX/Active Server Pages/DCOM approach, is an integral feature of extranets. Putting the program logic where it belongs and keeping the client side thin mean more opportunity for interoperability.

Electronic commerce should visibly accelerate the growth of extranets over the next year. Actra, an electronic-commerce joint venture of Netscape and GE Information Services, provides comprehensive software solutions for business-to-business and business-to-consumer electronic commerce. Meanwhile, Pandesic, a joint venture between database powerhouse SAP and chip-maker Intel, should be shipping early this year its first turnkey commerce systems aimed at simplifying entry into electronic business. The company's hardware/software/services bundle will be priced at about $25,000, plus some transaction fe es.

Changes in the networked world tend to happen slowly. Electronic commerce, awaited by merchants and heralded by vendors and industry pundits since about 1994, will get here as extranets gain momentum. Once extranet wires and workstations are in place, an avalanche of electronic commerce will follow.

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Where to Find

RSA Data Security, Inc.

Redwood City, CA
Phone:    650-595-8782
Internet: 
http://www.rsa.com




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IPSEC Allows Interoperable VPNs

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IPSEC will drive extranets by giving VPNs standard tunneling, encryption, and public-key-certification technology.

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RSA Data Security, Inc. in 1998

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AT A GLANCE: Extranets use existing TCP/IP internetworking and connectivity technologies, combined with distributed computing technologies, to foster secure interorganizational communication through the open, global Internet.

WHO SUPPORTS IT: AT&T, Bay Networks, Cisco, IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, Netscape, Object Management Group, Oracle, RSA Data Security, Security Dynamics, Siemens-Nixdorf, Sun, TimeStep, VPNet.