Vordel enables integration with Sophos to protect XML from virus threats

Vordel, the SOA security & management company, today announced support for Sophos Anti-Virus in the Vordel XML Gateway and SOA Management products. The new technology partnership allows Vordel’s customers to extend their virus scanning to XML traffic by licensing Sophos Anti-Virus Interface (SAV Interface).
 
XML traffic provides new pathways for attack, including SOAP message attachments and XML enclosures. Vordel has worked with Sophos to allow the delivery of complete up-to-the-minute anti-virus defence in environments protected by Vordel’s products. Unlike other XML security vendors who communicate with anti-virus engines by writing files to disk, Vordel’s award-winning products communicate with Sophos’s anti-virus engine in solid-state memory, with no disk I/O to introduce latency or the risk of hardware failure.

Gartner analyst Daniel Sholler notes that, “It is clear that an increasing percentage of network connections travel outside the corporate environment, and that these networks are increasingly XML-based (more than 75 percent of new business-to-business-related heterogeneous distributed application integration projects use XML messaging). It is also clear that an organizational responsibility exists to secure this traffic against basic threats.” *
Hugh Carroll, Vordel’s VP Marketing, speaking about this latest announcement said, “The Vordel/Sophos solution is available today. Vordel has a strong focus on security integration, and interoperates with identity management infrastructure; network management systems, and with network firewalls.
 
As usage of Web Services rises, so does the threat of self-replicating attacks on Web Services. Now, with this latest addition of Sophos’s anti-virus capabilities, Vordel further enhances the spectrum of defense for our customers’ XML applications,” continued Carroll.
 
Richard Baldry, Head of Strategic Alliances at Sophos said, “we are very pleased to be working with Vordel to protect their customers’ applications from known and unknown viruses, trojans, worms and spyware. The extension of our scanning capabilities to the SOA arena is an excellent demonstration of the power and flexibility of SAV Interface.”