Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite

Product Overview

The Secure Electronic Commerce Suite from Argus Systems Group, Inc. is the world's most complete end-to-end security solution for Internet-based electronic commerce, on-line home banking, and intercompany commercial transactions. It combines state-of-the-art Internet security technology from Argus, Sun Microsystems, and Netscape Communications in a fully integrated package supporting Sun Microsystems server platforms. The foundation of the Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite is a trusted Solaris 2.x operating system that has been certified to meet stringent internationally-recognized security criteria. The system's security features exceed the requirements for U.S. government B3 and CMW ratings and satisfy the European E3 security criteria. The core security technology has been proven under millions of hours of operational use in demanding military and defense environments around the world. The Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite provides iron-clad protection against external, Internet-based attacks, attacks from inside the firewall, as well as threats presented by holes and programming errors in application programs. Argus has augmented its secure foundation with SunScreen-EFS from Sun Microsystems, a high performance network encryption server supporting the SKIP protocol and an Internet/Intranet firewall. User authentication and transaction security is provided by the industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol from Netscape Communications. Support for the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol will be added soon. Comprehensive electronic commerce applications are provided by the Netscape Commerce Platform.

System Components

• Solaris 2.4 (or higher) network operating system
• Argus Fortify security framework
• SunScreen-EFS with SKIP
• Netscape Commerce Platform:
• Netscape SuiteSpot supporting Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
• Netscape LiveWire Pro
• Netscape LivePayment
• Netscape Navigator Gold

Total Security Framework

The Argus Fortify system protects all applications, servers, and network daemons from unauthorized access and hacker attacks.

• The Argus Fortify system removes theroot/superuser account, thus eliminating 'root compromise' security attacks.
• The Argus Fortify system provides a secureroot/superuser emulation capability which allows 100% support for commercial off-the-shelf application software.
• The Argus Fortify system protects all data files, network interfaces, databases, and system software from external and internal attack.
• The Argus Fortify system prevents inadvertant system compromise resulting from sloppy system administration.
• The Argus Fortify system provides a comprehensive auditing mechanism to monitor system activity and provides real-time notification to administrators and security personnel to attacks and potential security breaches.
• The SunScreen-EFS system provides high-performance packet filtering (firewall) capability preventing unwanted intrusions into servers and internal corporate networks.
• The SunScreen-EFS system serves as a powerful encryption server allowing the deployment of multiple Secure Virtual Private Networks for secure communications between branch offices and with remote business partners.
• The Netscape Secure Sockets Layer protocol provides data encryption, server authentication, message integrity, and browser-based user authentication for Web and Internet connections to commercial applications.

Comprehensive Electronic Commerce Suite

The Netscape Commerce Platform consists of two major components - the Netscape SuiteSpot line of server software and the new Netscape Commerce Extensions, such as LivePayment, that allow developers and businesses to create customized business environments - the Commerce Platform is a client-server system that scales seamlessly between work groups, an entire organization, and the global Internet. Both Netscape SuiteSpot products and the Netscape Commerce Extensions work with Netscape LiveWire Pro, a visual development environment and document conversion application that lets organizations easily create content for their online commerce site.

Netscape SuiteSpot - high-performance server software for conducting secure electronic commerce and communications on the Internet and other TCP/IP-based networks. Organizations can use SuiteSpot products as the basic server for their online business site. SuiteSpot products enable businesses to gather customer feedback, conduct market research, and build customer databases through the Internet.

Netscape Live Payment - enables a brand new class of commerce Web sites by allowing the integration of financial transactions into Web page content. Live Payment provides convenient, simple, low-cost solutions to allow creation of Web sites that execute Internet financial transactions.

Netscape LiveWire Pro - an online development environment for Web site management and client-server application development. LiveWire Pro lets users create Internet-based client-server applications ranging from internal corporate information management and intranet publishing to mass-market electronic transactions and commerce. Using JavaScript, users can create dynamic HTML pages that process user input and maintain persistent data with the LiveWire object framework, files, and relational databases.

Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite Protects Resources Against:

• Direct attacks from outside
• Application errors and bugs
• Attack through known network protocols
• Sloppy System Administration
• "root" compromise
• Attacks from inside the firewall

Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite Allows Customers To:

• Authenticate consumers and clients
• Encrypt sensitive transaction information
• Encrypt sensitive communications between branch offices and/or trading partners
• Screen requests and users
• Form impenetrable barriers around critical applications and systems software

Security Risks...Argus Solutions

The Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite addresses four primary elements of information security:

Confidentiality: Private, sensitive, or confidential information resources must be protected from unauthorized access, disclosure, and/or dissemination. The Commerce Suite provides labeled access control protections for all data resources. The operating system ensures that protected data resources can only be accessed by specifically authorized users and that those users cannot make the protected resources available to unauthorized users either through deliberate or accidental means. This security protection is enforced by the operating system and cannot be by-passed by malicious users or rogue processes.

Integrity: Users must have high assurance that critical information resources and system files are complete, accurate, and have not been modified by unauthorized processes or damaged by viruses. Argus security utilities offer numerous mechanisms which ensure the integrity of protected data, whether generated on the system or imported via network resources.

Availability : Users and administrators must have assurance that all of the system resources are available whenever needed. Most enterprises are totally reliant on computer systems for normal and mission critical operations. There are few, if any, manual backup systems today. Loss of productivity and valuable transaction information due to computer down time costs companies billions of dollars per year. Argus products prevent malicious users or rogue processes from seizing or disabling system resources by eliminating special root privileges and by routing all system and security information through a highly secure trusted path graphical user interface. This trusted path guarantees that only authorized personnel can access special administrative authorizations and it prevents any user from acquiring all powerful root privileges.

Authentication : Malicious users often use sophisticated spoofing equipment in order to masquerade as an authorized user of the system.. They can then gain access to any number of sensitive systems resources and data. Users and administrators must have complete confidence that those persons who are performing transactions are in fact authorized to be doing so. The Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite supports the Secure Sockets Layer protocol from Netscape to authenticate server to browser transactions and communications. In addition, SKIP authenticates for Virtual Private Network traffic.

Most of the security solutions on the market today address a single element of security. Using a layered approach to data and systems security, the Argus Secure Electronic Commerce Suite is able to address each element of data security to offer the most robust solution on the market today.

Supporting the World's Premier Computing Platforms

Argus's Secure Electronic Commerce Suite supports the market's leading internet computing platforms from Sun Microsystems which are based on the powerful SPARC® microprocessor architecture scaling from mid-range departmental servers to high-end multiprocessor enterprise servers. Specific hardware configuration specifications will depend on the user's needs. Please contact Argus Systems Group, Inc. for assistance in determining your requirements.