U.S. Air Force Presents Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award to Jericho Systems Corporation

November 8, 2011

Tools

Funded Research Recognizes Need for Enhanced Access Security in Shift to Cloud-Based Applications

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Jericho Systems Corporation, a pioneer and leading provider of powerful attribute-based access control (ABAC) technologies, today announced that it has been selected to receive a SBIR research grant from the United States Air Force.

The Phase I research will help the Department of Defense (DoD) control access to sensitive data by prototyping a method for applying SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) to REST (Representational State Transfer) Web protocols.

Earlier Web-based applications relied more heavily on communicating via SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). SOAP is based on performing complete operations on objects vs. simply handling the lower-level exchange of data. While SOAP offers basic security through its WS-Security features, it does not encourage interoperability because every application can implement its own custom objects and operations that may not integrate with other applications.

The increasing trend towards adopting cloud-based computing environments by both Federal and commercial organizations has highlighted the need for a more standardized protocol for exchanging data between multiple applications. This is driving mainstream Web providers to shift away from centralized object-centric protocols like SOAP in favor of faster, lightweight data-centric standards like REST.

As the reliance on REST-based (or ‘RESTful’) Web protocols increases, the need to enforce enterprise-grade security and access policies is also emerging. The research performed by Jericho Systems under the SBIR grant will bridge this gap between cloud-based Web services and heightened security requirements by enabling SAML to be applied to RESTful transactions.

Based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), SAML is a standard specification established by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). SAML enables sharing of authentication and authorization security decisions among cooperating entities and applications.

The prototype SAML-RESTful bridge will incorporate Jericho Systems products, including its EnterSpace® Decisioning Service (ESDS) and SAML Attribute Responder™ (SAR), along with Central Authentication Service (CAS), OpenID Authentication (OpenID), and OpenID Attribute Exchange (OpenID AE).

“Building a standardized bridge between SAML and RESTful Web services is an important first step toward enforcing an enterprise’s security policies and enabling attribute-based access control (ABAC) in browser-based Web environments,” said Jericho Systems CEO Brynn Mow. “By enabling much stronger and finer-grained security, our SAML-RESTful bridge will help accelerate the adoption of cloud-based architectures. This delivers direct benefits for the DoD and new commercial applications.”

About Jericho Systems Corporation

Dallas-based Jericho Systems Corporation provides enterprise-scalable decisioning and privilege management solutions, with its largest customers representing the healthcare, DoD, intelligence, and homeland security communities.

Jericho's flagship EnterSpace Decisioning Service (ESDS) software and professional services facilitate information security, regulatory compliance, quality, and efficiency. ESDS also improves collaboration and leverages the value of data by enabling timely and secure sharing of sensitive information - not only between internal groups, but also with external organizations. And to meet the unique needs of the healthcare market, Jericho’s new EnterSpace Exchange™ enhances ESDS with additional components that control the flow of information in healthcare applications while ensuring patient privacy.

EnterSpace technology is covered by United States Patents 7,779,247 and 7,792,828. For more information or to arrange a product demonstration, please call 972-231-2000, email info@jerichosystems.com, or visit www.jerichosystems.com.

EnterSpace is a registered trademark, and SAML Attribute Responder and EnterSpace Exchange are trademarks of Jericho Systems Corporation.