Dumb, dumb idea. Almost as bad as Palladium. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/19... BUGP6351V31.DTL Cisco security initiative 4 major firms working to head off Net attacks David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday, November 19, 2003 In an unusual alliance among staunch competitors, Cisco Systems will collaborate with three of the largest computer security firms to fight virus and worm attacks. Cisco, Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro will develop a new system for protecting networks against infection. The system, which the four firms hope to start selling early next year, will be able to block network access to any computer or device that doesn't have its own security measures in place. Hackers' increasing sophistication -- as well as a little competitive pressure -- drove the companies to work together. In a conference call Tuesday, the chief executives of all four firms said virulent programs like Blaster and Slammer demanded a more coordinated defense, with security programs and hardware working together off a shared set of standards. "Clearly, nothing like this can be done without collaboration among industry leaders," said John Thompson, CEO of Symantec Corp. Cisco helped bring the competing security firms together by describing the initiative to customers and asking them to lobby Network Associates, Symantec and Trend Micro to participate, said Bob Gleichauf, Cisco's chief technology officer for security. And knowing that their competitors were interested, none of the firms wanted to be left out in the cold, he said. "Everybody realized that it was in their interests and in the customers' interests to do this," Gleichauf said in an interview. Other security firms will be allowed to join the initiative by licensing the necessary software. The system under development will allow a computer network to check the safety of incoming traffic. Any device trying to connect to the network will be checked to see whether it has security measures already in place. Those that don't can be denied access, shunted off into a quarantined segment of the network or forced to download a security program. The announcement of the collaboration had little effect on the companies' stocks. Cisco closed down 1.45 percent at $21.73. Network Associates slid 5.44 percent to $13.03, Symantec Corp. dropped 7.13 percent to $61.35, and Trend Micro gained 3.43 percent to close at $24.41. E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 0.97c removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]