Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

North American OS/400 shops may be seeing more from BSafe Software Solutions, an Israeli software company that is expected to ship a new release of its OS/400 security software this week. In April, two iSeries resellers signed agreements with BSafe to distribute the BSafe/iSeries Global Security system, a product that has seen regional use in Israel, Europe, and Asia, but has yet to gain widespread use in the United States. BSafe officials say an increased awareness of security issues is driving sales throughout the world.

In 2001, BSafe Solutions launched iSeries Global Security, its client/server OS/400 program that provides network security, auditing, object management, and network traffic analysis capabilities, all in a single package. This week the company, headquartered in Hertzlia, a suburb of Tel Aviv, is expected to make iSeries Global Security Version 3.2 generally available. The updated release will feature enhancements to the Intrusion Detection System, the GUI-based system journal auditing component, and the EKG "heartbeat monitor" component, which monitors network traffic.

Since the product went on the market about two years ago, more than 100 companies around the world have licensed iSeries Global Security, says Ido Mor, vice president of international sales and marketing for BSafe. BSafe enjoys its biggest market share among financial services firms in Israel, where IBM sells the product as its own, and it has also found success in European banks.

Today, BSafe is trying to break into the American market, the biggest single market for OS/400 software. While the company has employees or representatives stationed in Toronto, New York City, and Newport Beach, California, BSafe is also attempting to grow its organization through partnerships and reseller deals. In April, the company signed distribution agreements with two Texas resellers, including DalTech International, the Dallas, Texas, iSeries reseller, and another, unnamed company. The company is looking for additional partners and plans to attend the COMMON conference in Orlando, Florida, later this summer.

BSafe says the market for security software is good, which is to say that the IT environment is not so secure, particularly with the OS/400 server, where security has not kept up with today's threats. Mor says that growth in international terrorism, white-collar accounting crimes, and disgruntled ex-employees who lose their jobs due to downsizing threaten the security of corporate computer systems. These threats are succeeding in raising the awareness of the need for more information security, particularly in the United States, where recent events have exposed vulnerabilities.

Companies using the OS/400 server to maintain their databases may have enjoyed relative immunity to these threats in the past, but the adoption of Internet protocols that bypass OS/400's traditional security safeguards have left many of these companies wide open to abuse, says Shimon Bouganim, founder and chief technology officer for BSafe. "There is really a big [security] hole," Bouganim says. "There is a real need for this product. It's not something nice to have. They must have this product--this type of product--if they're open to TCP/IP."

For instance, with an open TCP/IP connection, users can gain access to confidential files over a network, Bouganim says, and OS/400 would not be able to tell you who that user is. "There is no trace who deleted your file in the network. You don't know who deleted the file, who entered the network over the system," he says. "You can have this information in SNA, but not TCP/IP. Our product gives full information on that."

BSafe's audit log file in iSeries Global Security is basically the equivalent of an OS/400 system log file, company officials say, except that it can capture transactions that occur across standards-based connections, such as ODBC and FTP, as well as more traditional access paths. The other product feature that Bouganim and his colleagues point out is its native GUI. Most other security products on market still use a 5250 green-screen interface, they say.

Pricing for iSeries Global Security is tier-based and typically ranges from $5,000 to $25,000. For more information, go to www.bsafesolutions.com.