Raptor Systems Inc claims to have developed a security system similar to ones in place only at the US National Security Agency and AT&T Co. Raptor describes its product, Eagle, as an active security firewall on a local area network. It denies access to all unauthorised computers. According to president John Shepard, Eagle sits at the critical choke point between the local network backbone and the outside world, and is transparent to the user’s authentication scheme. Eagle includes proprietary software and, expensively, two Sun Microsystems Inc boxes connected by a proprietary serial link. One machine acts as a gatekeeper to the local network, the other as an authorisation database, the latter accessible only to the systems administrator. Eagle sends out audio and visual alarms when unauthorised action is attempted. It also provides an unusual activity report, time-authorised access and trace-routing after three failed attempts at entry. Sessions are killed if an authorised machine attempts an unauthorised privilege. Eagle was originally designed for the Internet. It also supports TCP/IP, X25 and SNA packets from public and private networks and it protects heterogeneous local nets. Eagle is also being converted to run on IBM Corp’s RS/6000 as an alternative to Sun’s machine and an intranet security system, dubbed Eaglet, is expected this month. Eagle will cost $75,000 per local network.
