The Book of Jericho 2.0 - Security architecture from old to new
The citizens of the ancient city of Jericho felt safe behind their seven stone walls. Today, most enterprise organisations feel safe behind their virtual defences and firewalls. Are we digitally isolated, or have these walls eroded?
Information Technology (IT) architecture captures the culture and history of an organisation. Mergers and acquisitions have diversified the IT landscape of every enterprise. Although this diversity is technically interesting, it seldom results in an agile and flexible organisation. While flexibility and agility are just what a business needs, especially in a collaborative and open global economy. Additionally, respect for the privacy of information and firm control over financial data seem to contradict the need for openness.
Many organisations strive to find the balance between the need for openness and the need for control. Technological IT security principles introduced since the dawn of the Internet have fulfilled their task with varying degrees of success. Our changing world demands new IT security principles to accommodate business needs to be both open and fully in control. Standardisation communities such as the Liberty Alliance, the Open Group's Jericho Forum and the Internet Engineering Taskforce have formulated visions for future Security Architecture. The Jericho Project Research Group at Capgemini has combined these visions and materialised them in this book.