Computer Associates International Inc will announce today that it has chosen a kernel-based content inspection technology from Security-7 Software Inc to integrate with its Inoculan anti virus software, which is part of Unicenter TNG. Boston, Massachusetts-based Security-7’s product, called SafeGate, is built on a patent-pending processing engine that works at the packet level to determine whether or not Java applets or ActiveX controls contain virus. At present Inoculan, like many other anti-virus packages, work at the proxy server level and have to run applets to determine whether or not they contain viruses, says Rich Kosinski, VP marketing for Security-7. SafeGate, on the other hand looks at each packet at the network layer within the operating system kernel – thus avoiding OS interrupts – determine the start of the applet and build a state table. That is then compared to a set of rules set by the administrators’ policies and there is no need to execute the applet or control to determine whether it is virus-free. Kosinksi says that traditional anti-virus tools do not scale because they are built on a database with a few heuristics thrown in and are not able to deal with the kind of highly-mobile code that Java has brought about because there is no way the database can be kept up to date. SafeGate can also validate the source of the applets and controls using digital certificates and the public key infrastructure. It can decipher signatures and use the public key to go to the certification authority to ensure that the key is still valid and identify the source. The deal with CA is its first integration deal, but is not exclusive. Kosinski says Security-7 is talking to other anti- virus and firewall vendors, including possible OEM deals because it has the APIs already written. CA will sell the Safe-Gate- enhanced Inoculan direct and through its channels starting July 1. SafeGate is only available on Windows NT, but a port to Solaris is underway. The company has completed its first round of funding, getting $4m from Boston Capital Ventures and the Oppenheimer fund. Its main research and development is done in Israel.
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