C-DAC develops new security products

MUMBAI, INDIA: The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Mumbai has indigenously developed three new security products keeping in view the security needs of critical national infrastructure networks.

These new security product line include Revival 1000, a disaster recovery solution; Guard Your Network (Gyn) 1000, a network intrusion prevention appliance; and Stars, a secure two factor authentication for remote systems.

According to C-DAC Mumbai executive director Zia Saquib, these products are very significant in today's time because most of the critical national infrastructure networks are linked with IT networks and frameworks.

“Since the critical infrastructure networks such as rails, logistics, power supply and other networks are linked with IT networks, there's high chance of threats and vulnerabilities, as the network signals can be hacked and manipulated. This can cause a major disaster leading to loss of human lives,” Saquib explained.

A 15-member team at C-DAC Mumbai developed these products over a period of two and half years.

“These new products are developed on C-DAC's technology, which is very indigenous and it's not like those security products sold in boxes by the large IT vendors, which are more of a proprietary nature and keeps you locked,” Saquib claimed.

“We are developing no indigenous product but indigenous technology. That this can help us build our competency, we won't need to depend on foreign countries and multinational companies,” he added.

These new products follow open standards protocol which allows them to be deployed on any existing systems and networks. In addition, the product-customization will help in application and usage beyond the critical national infrastructure networks.

About the products' features, he pointed out that these products have features which are at par with products from the top five vendors and also the pricing remains very competitive and attractive.

Revival 1000 is a cost-effective solution for critical data protection and disaster recovery based on iSCSI platform over TCP/IP to provide block replication at remote site. It is interoperable with legacy hardware systems including SAN boxes and other database-based applications.

Gyn 1000, the network intrusion prevention appliance, works in bridge mode for providing protection. It analyzes the packets for preventive measures after validating the critical attacks by carrying out multi-method detections using several signatures and anomaly detection mechanism.

It protects against DoS, DDoS, worms, web and email attacks, threats against database (SQL) servers, scans, floods, protocol and application anomalies. Currently, Gyn 1000 is still in the beta stage.

While, Stars is a two factor authentication solution for web based services such as e-commerce, e-shopping, e-banking among others. It ensures high level security for authentication and encrypted communication using authenticated dynamic session key. It offers flexibility of using either an external device such as USB token or soft token as second factor in addition to smart cards.

It is for the first time that C-DAC will be putting these security products in the open commercial market and will face competition from various established multinational companies and vendors.