Event
Summary
In February,
IBM announced that as of the end of this year, it will cease to market the AS/400
add-on Firewall product, and as of May 31, 2001, it will cease to support it.
Citing increased competition, and focus on other products as a priority, IBM
said that there are enough alternative firewall products on the market for IBM
customers. Many of these products provide a superior solution for AS/400 customers.
Market
Impact
Due to the pace at which security technology is changing, and the need for layered
approaches to security, unless security is a vendor's core competency, it's
hard to keep up. Having accepted the fact that their core competency is not
firewalls, IBM will be referring firewall customers Axent, Checkpoint, and Cisco.
This means new customer opportunities for Axent, Checkpoint, and Cisco, as well
as any other firewall vendors savvy enough to reach into IBM's firewall customer
give-away basket.
User
Recommendations
Just because IBM is waving the white flag when it comes to firewalls, don't
underestimate the security capabilities of the AS/400. With integrated security
throughout the hardware and operating system, the AS/400 provides among the
best rock solid host security in existence today.
When
examining the alternatives to the AS/400, depending on what kind of technology
approach you want to take, IBM recommends Checkpoint/Nokia Firewall-1, a Stateful
Packet Inspection firewall; Axent's Raptor firewall, a Proxy firewall; or
the Cisco IOS firewall, a Network Embedded firewall. Today, Stateful
Packet Inspection firewalls dominate the market.