|
Sent for Bill Morgan by David Peet: There currently is no "AS3". For
the past three years, bTrade has been facilitating a healthy exchange
of opinions in this great debate. Secure
FTP is an established technology that leverages SSL to protect the session. "SMIME-ing"
the payload is easily achievable for a nested security schema, as is DES, 3DES,
AES, PGP, etc. Message
Disposition Notifications are foreign to FTP servers and would thus present a
formidable barrier to adoption by current S/FTP environments. Finally,
there is still the great firewall policy debates relating to
exposing FTP ports to the Internet. That
is why Virtual Private Networks were created, to leverage the Internet for
secure business communications without the risk of exposing FTP ports. Those
of us who have provided EDIINT solutions over the past two or three years have
always understood these "FTP" challenges and have responded in kind
to market demands. To date, the market has demanded Secure FTP, AS1, and
AS2. An
AS3 offering can quickly be released by most of us, but adoption rates will not
be nearly as high as AS1 or AS2, if AS3 gains traction at all. However,
AS3 offerings may provide a degree of consternation by those trying to simplify
and consolidate secure Internet communications. Regarding
ebXML, the Message, Routing, and Transportation standard is agnostic to SMTP,
HTTP, or FTP communications. Furthermore,
the ebXML protocol was carefully crafted to be neutral of all transport
protocols. HTTP,
FTP, SMTP or any other "P" can be used within an ebXML framework. By
the way, did you hear about bTrade's AS4? Bill
Morgan Executive
Vice President, Chief
Solutions Officer bTrade,
inc. 972.580.2900 -----Original
Message----- I strongly suggest we
take up the issue of demand. Cyclone has been servicing market demand for
this capability for several years in production hardened environments and
would be happy to argue in favor of FTP as a valid transport for EDIINT. Alternatively, the role
of FTP within the ebXML standard could be elevated to achieve the same desired
functionality with the advantage of what ebXML brings to the table. Either way, the absence
of FTP as a transport for secure B2B messaging is an obvious hole. FTP is
a valid transport with an enormous amount of existing infrastructure - it
ought to be elevated in the appropriate standards, be it EDIINT, ebXML, or
both. I'm happy to actively
participate in any initiatives in this regard. Cheers, -Greg. Greg Vesper -----Original
Message----- There is no proposed AS3 standard. On several occasions,
vendor's have requested an AS3 standard based upon FTP. Thus far, we have
not seen enough end-user demand to proceed with this, but if such demand
becomes evident, we could. Regards, David Fischer Drummond Group. -----Original
Message----- Anyone know what is proposed for AS3. Trailblazer Systems is
implementing FTP with S/MIME. They also mention AS3 on their web site as a
proposed standard: http://www.as400ftp.com/latestnews_detail.cfm?number=2 I can't find anything about this proposed standard anywhere except
for the mention on the page indicated above. Jeffrey Lightcap |