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War on spam gains 2 allies MICROSOFT, SYMANTEC GO TO WASHINGTON TO PUSH NEW PRODUCTS By Caron Carlson IN WASHINGTON The anti-spam crusade is gaining momentum as industry players, including Microsoft Corp. and Symantec Corp., counter pending bills on Capitol Hill with legislative proposals of their own. To date, proposed ideas have covered a wide range of measures, from jail time for repeat spammers to a tiny charge on every piece of spam sent. The Senate is slated to sort through all the options and vote on one proposal before summer’s end. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., got into the act last week when company Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates called for Congress to create incentives for e-mail marketers to adopt best practices and become certified trusted senders. As part of the proposal, the Federal Trade Commission would provide a safe harbor for companies that join an FTC-approved selfregulating group. Legislation would require marketers to properly label their e-mail and would give ISPs the right to take spammers to court. Symantec suggested to lawmakers last week that legislation should focus on false labeling and require a physical address in commercial bulk e-mail. The Cupertino, Calif., company, whose brand and products have been fraudulently peddled by e-mail, also asked Congress to give the FTC more resources to prosecute electronic fraud. For America Online Inc., spam is the most important issue today, Ted Leonsis, AOL vice chairman, told the Sen- ate Commerce Committee last week. “There is raw anger that spam generates,” Leonsis said, adding that the government needs stronger tools to track down the most fraudulent offenders. Others maintain, however, that anger stems not only from fraudulent e-mail but also from the growing volume of unsolicited messages, to which ISPs contribute. Charging that AOL, of New York, operates its “own personal spam com- Schumer’s bill would give repeat spammers jail time. pany,” Ronald Scelson, owner of Scelson Online Marketing Inc., in Slidell, La., told lawmakers that some ISPs are filtering out legal messages if they receive one complaint, driving bulk e-mailers to forge addresses. Calling himself “the most hated person” at the hearing, Scelson said he sends as many as 180 million e-mail messages every day and that it takes him less than 24 hours to thwart an NEWS&ANALYSIS ISP’s spam filters. The industry approaches, which urge Congress to preempt state anti-spam laws, are largely consistent with the longest-standing anti-spam bill, the CAN-SPAM initiative sponsored by Sens. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. CAN-SPAM would ban the use of false or deceptive headers or subject lines, require senders to provide users with an opt-out feature, and prohibit private rights of action. Consumer groups, and many state attorneys general, are calling on Congress to take a tougher approach. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is sponsoring a bill that would establish jail time as a penalty for serious, repeat spammers and create a national “Do not spam” list. Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., last week suggested that a small tax on e-mail would deter spam. ´ Smarter storage on horizon? By Evan Koblentz For several years, users have clamored for more management features to be added to existing hardware. Now, a number of vendors are suggesting it’s better to build smarter hardware in the first place. In fact, technologies are under development, according to industry experts, that improve the way low-end RAID controllers communicate with drive clusters and that enable highend array intelligence to reside as objects in central servers. “The future of the storage industry looks just like the future of the rest of computing,” said John Webster, an analyst at Data Mobility Group Inc., in Nashua, N.H. “People build functions, express it in hardware or software, and [eventually] express it in more efficient ways of doing things.” On the low-end storage front, users in the future will be able to consolidate storage, move drives among controller units, replace failed parts and upgrade to new features—all among different vendors and without having to use backup data sets or remap every drive and volume, said Wayne Rickard, chairman of the Storage Networking Industry Association’s Technical Council and vice president of advanced technology at Seagate Technology LLC. Such interoperability will be facilitated by the Disk Data Format Provisional Working Group proposed this month by Adaptec Inc., Dell Computer Corp. and LSI Logic Corp., Rickard said. Creating the standards could take two years, said Rickard, in Scotts Valley, Calif. In high-end storage, object-based storage is also on its way to becoming a context-aware, native technology. For evidence, users can look to hardware such as EMC Corp.’s Centera and software such as IBM’s StorageTank. Instead of mapping logical units, numbers and zones directly between servers and storage, “with object-based storage, the devices are doing all this themselves,” said Mike Mesnier, co-chair of SNIA’s object storage devices working group and storage architect at Intel Corp. By this fall, the working group will complete its security and data sharing documents, said Mesnier, in Pittsburgh. ´ MAY 26, 2003 n eWEEK 15
NEWS&ANALYSIS Network analysis: Fast and frugal SUNBELT TOOLS CUT COSTS, SPEED TASKS By Paula Musich Sunbelt software inc. hasdeveloped a pair of administrative tools that deliver fast, inexpensive analysis of directory and network protocol issues for administrators. The Clearwater, Fla., company’s directory reporting tool works across multiple directories, including those of Novell Inc., Microsoft Corp., IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc., as well as any LDAPenabled directory. It reports on security, integrity and com- CYBER-SECURITY FROM PAGE 1 hind the center is the need to improve the government’s incident-response and information-sharing capabilities, which have come under fire in both public and private sectors, said Richard Clarke, former special adviser to the president for cyber-security, who resigned earlier this year. That criticism is likely to continue unless the department can attract a well-known security expert to run the center. “The center will never become what it should be in terms of the national locus for policy unless there’s a nationally recognized and high-level person with high-level access in the administration,” Clarke said in an interview in Boston last week. “Because otherwise people will just consider it another bureaucratic organization. It’s very key that they get the right person; very key that person has access to the president, the homeland security adviser and homeland security secretary.” For others, however, such as 16 eWEEK n MAY 26, 2003 pliance in enterprise directories, officials said. The Directory Inspector tool, due this week, lets directory or system managers easily answer such questions as: Where are the users? Do some users have too many security privileges? Are there unused user accounts? Are there duplicate account names? “It is a management issue when you have multiple directories,” said Alex Eckelberry, president of Sunbelt. “For companies with that hodgepodge, to be able to report on them from a single view—this lets you distill security experts in the private sector, who have accused the government of failing to respond quickly to emerging security threats and of being difficult to deal with, the choice of a leader for the national center is not as crucial. “I don’t think it’s possible Clarke: New chief will need top access. for the government to have much of an effect. The government acts in a reactive fashion,” said Eric Stromberg, senior electrical engineer at The Dow Chemical Co., based in Wilmington, Del. complex information.” Directory Inspector, which provides Wizards to guide users through complex directory data, is priced starting at $1,295 for 500 user objects. Sunbelt’s other tool, LANhound, also due this week, cuts the cost of basic protocol analysis and network monitoring—especially for switched LANs—in a commercial-grade product. The cost to capture and analyze network protocols such as TCP/IP, NetBEUI, IPX/SPX and AppleTalk on switched networks can be high, since vendors often charge for each remote seg- “There will always be the leading issues that eventually cause government to react. But as the government is reacting to issues that were birthed yesterday, new issues are forming today.” The national center will be part of the Directorate of Information Assurance and Infrastructure Protection at the DHS, Clarke said. As a center of gravity for government information security, it will combine the functions of the National Infrastructure Protection Center, the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, the Federal Computer Incident Response Center and the National Communications System. As the DHS meshes the center together, members of Congress charged with overseeing the department’s cyber-security efforts are scrambling to understand how all the pieces will fit. For example, two separate House panels—the Commit- MARK ALCAREZ ment or switch port. Typical protocol analyzers can start at $1,000, plus $395 per remote agent. LANhound, which includes three remote agents for $595, could greatly reduce the cost to monitor and analyze network traffic across multiple segments. “That pricing will make a big difference,” said beta tester Erik Goldoff, systems manager at The HoneyBaked Ham Co., in Norcross, Ga. “You are talking a factor of 10 cheaper. With LANhound, it just starts monitoring the network and shows where the protocol distribution is [and] what the network statistics are.” LANhound displays statistics in charts and bar graphs and lets users set alarms that trigger a packet capture to aid trouble-shooting. ´ tee on Science and the cybersecurity subcommittee of the Select Committee on Homeland Security—have unsuccessfully sought answers to such questions as, How many resources are being devoted to cyber-security? Cyber-security is among the priorities for the Science and Technology Directorate, Charles McQueary, DHS undersecretary of the directorate, told the cyber-security subcommittee of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security at a hearing in Washington last week. McQueary said the DHS will create a technology clearinghouse, which will enable it to work in partnership with private industry. DHS officials said they are still working out the details of the national cyber-security center, including its formal name and organizational structure. ´ For more on DHS,see. story,Page 33.
Page 1 and 2: VOLUME 20, NUMBER 21 n $6 NEWSPAPER
Page 3 and 4: MAY 26, 2003 CONTENTS NEWS&ANALYSIS
Page 5 and 6: NEWS&ANALYSIS LATE NEWS Microsoft t
Page 7: NEWS&ANALYSIS FRONT OFFICE Oracle e
Page 11 and 12: NEWS&ANALYSIS SERVERS StarView remo
Page 13 and 14: NEWS&ANALYSIS Face to Face: Clark M
Page 15 and 16: Security: Government DHS revamp on
Page 17 and 18: Software links backup, SRM CA, VERI
Page 19 and 20: Storage: OS upgrade Bigger, better
Page 21 and 22: NEWS&ANALYSIS SPARC workstation is

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