(August 1, 2002) - Reactivity, Inc., a provider of products for distributed application security, has introduced the Reactivity Service Firewall™, a unique, drop-in solution that makes secure XML and Web services-based application integration fast and affordable. The Reactivity Service Firewall can be deployed at a fraction of the time and cost of custom-coded solutions. It's easy to use and maintain and scales effortlessly as the number of applications increase and environments become more complex. The Service Firewall supports both XML-based message integration and the latest Web service standards and tools.

The first practical solution for securing and controlling XML applications and Web services usage, the Reactivity Service Firewall sits at the edge of the corporate network to secure message flow between distributed applications. The Run-Time Engine normalizes messages from multiple transport protocols and performs authentication, authorization, validation, and routing to secure bi-directional message flow. The Management Console centralizes policy configuration, monitors messages and exceptions in real-time, and enables comprehensive audit logging and reporting of all messages and transactions.

The Reactivity Service Firewall reduces redundant code that would otherwise be hard-wired into each application in a distributed environment or built into a series of integration points. Without abstracting application-level security, every time a new application or partner is added, all other applications would need to be modified to incorporate the necessary security requirements before they can interact.

Reactivity has developed several unique technologies that model applications and identities for on-the-fly configuration changes, normalize messages across multiple protocols and formats (including legacy), and use advanced "least effort" message handling techniques to deliver optimal performance and maximum throughput. Reactivity's patent-pending "content+envelope" security checking allows security decisions to be made based on both header and message content for highly granular access control.

The demand for products that secure application-level messages is being driven by the rapid adoption of XML and Web services, the open standards that enable the broken promise of simplified application integration. This new open computing environment brings a new set of application-level security risks to the enterprise including unauthorized access to critical application logic, system crashes by "flooding" applications with denial of service requests, and data theft by hackers impersonating trusted machines.

The Reactivity Service Firewall 1.0 is available for purchase on a per-CPU basis for securing project-based application integration or as a federated application security platform for the distributed enterprise. See www.reactivity.com for more information.