A New Weapon in the War Against Hacker Defacement; Patent-Pending G-Server and Proprietary ExitControl Technology Prevent Defacements Even If Site Security Is Breached.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NetSec

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 12, 2000

It's every CEO's worst nightmare: international media reports that the company web site has been vandalized, published false information or, worse still, gone "down" for repair due to security intrusions.

Lost revenues, investors, advertisers, customer loyalty; sinking stock prices. One Silicon Valley hi-tech has developed a product to transform those spine-chilling scenarios into scenic strolls in the park.

The company is Gilian Technologies, an Internet infrastructure venture that draws on the strength of Israeli cryptography and military communications security specialists to develop innovative solutions for content integrity. The product is the G-Server(TM), a small plug-and-use device that can be installed and running transparently on a network in less than an hour; using Gilian's patent-pending, proprietary ExitControl(TM) technology, the G-Server authenticates and authorizes content before it is published on the web. The result: if site data has been altered, damaged or defaced, the G-Server simply intercepts the compromised content and replaces it with the genuine article -- without visitors ever knowing a glitch was in the making (site authorities, on the other hand, are alerted instantly).

The G-Server(TM), the first web content security and integrity system to use the new ExitControl(TM) technology, was exhibited at the NetSec conference today in San Francisco following rave revues at Networld/Interop and The Internet Security Conference.

Unlike firewalls, intrusion detection and other conventional protection mechanisms -- all of which are designed to prevent source penetration -- the G-Server(TM) continuously regulates a site's exit point to ensure that only genuine content is published on the web, even if intruders break in. And they do break in.

"You cannot stop site penetrations by unknown intruders, but you can be certain that a defacement is never seen by the customer," said Rafael Feitelberg, the Redwood City-based CEO of the two-year-old Internet infrastructure company. "Last year, more than 5,000 web sites were seriously compromised, and reports indicate that these attacks are rising to levels of more than 1,000 a month." If these sites had installed G-Servers, said Feitelberg, their content would still have been secure.

That kind of protection could have made a real difference for sites like the New York Times, Yahoo, NASDAQ, Symantec, Lloyds of London, Wired, ABC-TV, MSN and the White House, all victims in recent months of major defacements.

"No one is totally immune from the malicious intentions of obsessed hackers, and web managers have typically had few tools in their arsenals with which to mitigate hack attacks," said Joshua Greenbaum, a principal with Enterprise Applications Consulting, an industry research firm based in Berkeley, Calif. "Gilian's new ExitControl technology can change the balance of power by enabling web sites to guarantee that the content they publish from their sites is as hacker-proof as possible."

The G-Server was created to offer content-rich sites high performance as well as assurances that the data they publish is genuine. This is especially important to online ventures like Yahoo, amazon.com and others whose web content is their fundamental business.

"Web sites' legal liability is increasing as users rely on published content for trading and other business purposes," Greenbaum added. "E-commerce, news media, financial and equity trading sites can't afford to publish incorrect or altered data. It could put them out of business."

A beta user at a major Northeastern U.S. newspaper, who declined to be identified due to security policies, reported that the G-Server not only monitors and maintains content integrity but enables the paper to manage more effectively the staging and production processes. "Before we had a mixed bag of methods to post new content," the source said, "now with G-Server, the process has become streamlined and efficient."

A New Generation in Content Assurance

The G-Server is a systems-level solution that resides on a network between the web server and the Internet. Because it uses no IP address -- the number by which Internet systems identify each other -- no operations or remote connection can be made with the G-Server from the IP network, making it secure from any internal or external intrusion attempts.

As data passes through the G-Server en route to the web -- whether text, graphics or media -- the G-Server captures it and checks it for authenticity by comparing its algorithmically-coded digital signature to the digital signature on a pre-stored, authorized copy of the data. Genuine content is allowed to pass without any noticeable delay. Any change in content, however minute, prompts the G-Server to publish the authorized content and simultaneously alert site authorities of the alteration.

"Our testing of the G-Server indicates that the product lives up to its billing," said Jeff Mace, president of MaceLabs Corp., an independent product testing company. "The detection of altered content works well and the recovery mechanisms run as specified. Functionally speaking, the G-Server is stable and robust, especially for a first generation product. The G-Server's unique technology of dealing with unwanted intruders will easily make this product a winner, if not a necessity, for any mission critical corporate site."

Installation, Pricing and Availability

G-Server comes as an appliance pre-installed and tested on a Pentium III-class network server and pre-configured to the host network where it will be installed. Installation is plug-and-use and often takes less than an hour to install and test. Pricing for the G-Server in its primary configuration begins at $54,000 and is available immediately.

About Gilian Technologies Inc.

Gilian Technologies Inc. is the global technology leader in content integrity infrastructure for the Internet. Gilian Technologies' breakthrough ExitControl(TM) technology and plug-and-use G-Server(TM) empower web sites to continuously protect and publish genuine content despite security intrusions. With credentials in Israeli cryptography and military communications security, the Silicon Valley-based company is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., and has offices in Boston, Mass., and on Israel's hi-tech seacoast. Gilian Technologies is located on the Web at: www.gilian.com.

Note to Editors: Gilian, G-Server, ExitControl and related original product characterization are trademarks of Gilian Technologies, Inc. Other trademarks are property of their respective owners.