Frank Willoughby writes:
While IP level security & authentication will go a long way to help prevent abuses and reduce unauthorized accesses, I doubt if it will provide enough protection by itself.
I agree with this, but...
o Node Spoofing will probably still be possible
Nope. It won't.
o The connections will probably also be subject to man-in-the-middle attacks (Never underestimate the creativity of people who want to compromise your networks)
No, they won't be subject to such attacks any longer. The real problem, as you noted, is that our applications aren't very secure.
I suspect even when firewalls are embedded in the O/S,
That would be somewhat meaningless. The point of a firewall, as others here have noted, is that it is easier to secure one machine than five hundred or ten thousand.
IMHO, the first company to include a firewall as a standard part of their Operating Systems has a real good shot at increasing their market share.
Again, somewhat meaningless, as a real firewall involves defense in depth (screening routers, a bastion proxy host, etc) and is more of a configuration issue than an O.S. issue. Perry