InternetMicrosoft, Cisco, EMC Do Government Security

The companies bank on securing government agencies with new architecture.

Three of the biggest names in high tech are buddying up to improve the security of IT systems for government agencies. Microsoft (Quote), Cisco Systems (Quote) and EMC (Quote) have created service configurations under the Secure Information Sharing Architecture (SISA), which is designed to protect and share sensitive government information. The move is a response to the events of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina as well as the raft of data breaches floating around government agencies and other sectors in the last few years. One of the biggest security breaches occurred when a laptop containing the personal information of more than 26 million war veterans was stolen from a Department of Veteran Affairs employee's home last year. SISA is designed so that only authorized personnel can access and share information. Eric Rosenkranz, industry manager for e-government at Microsoft, said one of the drivers of SISA is that the government needs to communicate horizontally across different agencies and jurisdictional boundaries much more effectively. "Protecting sensitive information and sharing information are two goals that are in conflict," Rosenkranz told internetnews.com. "We believe that no single company, government organization or even government can solve two opposing requirements on their own." While traditional information protection technologies tend to wall off data in separate islands, SISA allows government agencies to set up virtual networks... [ Read more on www.internetnews.com ]

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