IF-MAP protocol excites Interop

Posted by Ken Y-N on May 8th, 2008 at 02:36pm

One of the biggest buzzes from the recent Interop Las Vegas conference, the leading event for the networking industry, was the announcement of the Trusted Computing Group’s (TCG) Trusted Network Connect (TNC) workgroup’s new protocol, IF-MAP, the Interface for Metadata Access Point.

With many of the 140-plus member companies of the TCG contributing towards this specification, adoption should be rapid and will be available on a broad range of hardware. The IF-MAP has a powerful publish/subscribe/search protocol for sharing real-time information on network devices, policies, status and behaviour. For instance, if an intrusion detector finds unusual activity, it can issue an alert to a server to say that something fishy is going on. This alert can then be automatically and instantly relayed to a firewall that has signed up to the server with IF-MAP, so that the firewall can try to contain the problem. This full integration of diverse devices can strengthen network security through continuous monitoring.

Further features supported by the protocol allow sharing of user rights across all devices, so that for example only certain groups of users or classes of connections are allowed to run VoIP. These rights need only be configured in one place then automatically and instantly shared across all IF-MAP-aware devices.

David O’Berry, the director of Information Technology Systems and Services for the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole, and Pardon Services, was quoted as saying:

“From my perspective as a practitioner and customer of various companies, TCG’s IF-MAP adds a very real workable path to a heterogeneous solution from what recently would have been considered only wishful thinking. With the addition of this standard, we can transcend individual products and realistically look to add valuable agility back into the network via an extensible standards-based security framework. This is revolution, not evolution.”

Companies who displayed TNC-related products at the TCG’s Interop Booth #421 and at the show’s InteropLabs included the following: ArcSight, Aruba Networks, Avenda Systems, Enterasys Secure Networks, Fujitsu Ltd., Identity Engines, Infoblox, Juniper Networks, Lumeta, MacAfee, Microsoft, nSolutions, ProCurve Networking by HP, Q1 Labs, Symantec, Trapeze Networks and Wave Systems.

In addition, last month the TNC held their third annual plug-fest, where interoperability across the IF-IMC, IF-IMV, IF-MAP, IF-PEP, IF-T, and IF-TNCCS were tested in a simulated enterprise environment. Participants included Enterasys, FreeRADIUS, Identity Engines, Infoblox, Juniper Networks, libTNC, OpenSEA, ProCurve Networking by HP, Symantec, TNC@FHH, and Trapeze Networks. Products covered the following fields: switches and access points, RADIUS servers, TNC integrity measurement collectors and verifiers, and TNC clients and servers. A highlight was the first test of open source TNC interoperability, with a FreeRADIUS RADIUS server, TNC@FHH TNC server, OpenSEA 802.1X supplicant, and libTNC TNC client and integrity measurement collectors and verifiers.

The full story may be read at the Business Wire web site here.

Tags: if-map, interop, open source

Under TCG Tags: if-map, interop, open source