International Business Machines Corporation

Networks Associates Technology, Inc.

Iona Technologies Limited

Informix Software, Inc.

Sowl Associates, Inc.

Igor V Balabine

Ilya Minkin

John A Skier

Ramiah Kandasamy

Gerhard Eschelbeck

William G Friedman

A method and apparatus for establishing authenticated network (e.g., TCP/IP) connections augments the network (e.g., TCP/IP) protocol and enables concealment of the presence of network (e.g., TCP/IP) servers on the network. One methodology uses one or more cryptographic techniques, and/or combinations of such techniques, to achieve the goal. A network (e.g., TCP/IP) connection establishment could be authenticated using both shared secret cryptographic and public key cryptographic methods. The trust between peers could be established either directly or via a trusted third party. One methodology allows network (e.g., TCP/IP) server concealment against Internet based eavesdroppers and eavesdroppers staging man-in-the-middle attacks on the local network or in the close proximity to the server. The techniques described herein may be used to protect a network (e.g., TCP/IP) server from establishing unsanctioned connections from both local and remote networks.

Establishing authenticated network connections

A system, method and computer program product are provided for affording network security features. A plurality of network objects are identified. Rule sets associated with one or more of the identified network objects are retrieved. Each rule set includes a plurality of policy rules that govern actions relating to the identified network objects. Overlapping policy rules of the rule sets are reconciled amongst the network objects. The reconciled rule sets are executed. A computer program product and a method are also provided for establishing network security. A plurality of network objects of a network and a plurality of rule sets are provided. The network objects are associated with the rule sets. The rule sets include a plurality of policy rules that govern actions relating to the identified network objects during operation of the network.

System, method and computer program product for rule based network security policies

Methods and an apparatus are provided for providing secure communications around a firewall. The firewall is configured to only pass packets if they originate on a more protected side of the firewall or if they are in response to such a packet. A persistent secure connection is made from a connection manager program inside the firewall to a server outside the firewall. A protocol request message is then sent from the connection manager to the server over the secure connection. Requests arriving from a client are embedded in a protocol response message and sent to the connection manager program. After processing, the results, if any, are sent as a protocol request message to the server, which extracts the result from the protocol request message and puts the result in a protocol response message, which is sent to the requesting client.

Methods and apparatus for securing access to a computer

Information in a database is accessed with a computer system by transforming a file system request from an application into a database query and retrieving information corresponding to the database query from the database. The retrieved information is made available to the application as a file system object, for example, as a directory, a file, a link or a collection thereof.

Database interface for database unaware applications

File system interface to a database

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Igor V Balabine