Spinnin’ Yarns

Posted by in Analysis on Jul 24, 2006

There’s been some serious spin in the air of late. Yesterday, Biometric Access Systems put out some serious action entitled “Biometric lock ensures ultimate security.” Now, I’m not going to get on this company about the “ultimate security” thing (although somebody should probably tell them it won’t have the effect the intend.) Nope – these guys are a small shop, they’re in the SOHO/consumer marketplace, and they’re probably not used to security outside that environment – given these factors, leaping on them about their statements (inaccurate though they may be) is probably bad form.

Verisign, on the other hand, ought to know better. They’re distributing a white paper about why you should be using SGC (“international”) certificates on your web server. In the paper, they make some claims about these certs. For example, they say that “… among leading SSL providers only VeriSign can provide 128-bit SSL encryption

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  • Starfan

    You know, I’ve been looking all over the place for a security minded blogger to address SGC certs. These are nothing more than fools gold being sold to network and security “professionals” who don’t take a little bit of time to analyze whether or not they are a good fit for their organization.

    Currently, I’m in a debate with some of my peers about their usefulness. CAs quote that these certs will ensure 99.9% protection. What they fail to mention is that SGC technology is extremely limited in scope and that all the right pieces must be at play in order for it to be useful at all. Old browsers on machines capable of 128bit encryption…Win2k boxes WITHOUT at least SP4. It has a very specific application that is probably not applicable to most of the security pros that buy into its usefulness today.

    If I had a multitude of users overseas who had not done a thing to update their PC since mid-2000, I might be able to convice myself to buy into the hype. Otherwise, the actual segment of clients that would need SGC technology is probably less than 1%…and they can’t use SGC anyway!

    I’m finished ranting! :) Thanks for your post.

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