Articles by David Dupré

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Housed in the historic 19th century Bourse (Stock Exchange) building in the heart of Lyon, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Lyon CCI) plays a key role in the development of France’s second biggest regional economy. The CCI consults with and lobbies government representatives and politicians at local, national and international levels to defend the interests of 58,000 businesses in and around Lyon. It supports the creation, acquisition, and development of member businesses.

The problem

Many of the applications developed for use internally at the CCI were developped for compatibility with version 6 of Microsoft’s Windows Internet Explorer (aka IE6). More recent applications, however, have been developed for compatibility with version 7. And as most web development pros know, an IE6-optimized application is highly likely to be incompatible with IE7 – and vice-versa.

So how could the IT services at the CCI reliably deliver access to older applications and more recent ones, given that it’s impossible to install both versions of IE on a single desktop?

Virtual Browser provides the solution

The Virtual Browser solution resolves the problem by integrating IE6 as the browsing environment in the users’ Virtual Browser session. The Virtual Browser session thus ensures full support for older, IE6-compatible applications while the desktop IE7 installation allows users to access more recently developed web applications.

Users are satisfied as they continue to use the older applications transparently while benefiting from the improved features of IE7 for newer applications. For the CCI, using Virtual Browser to deliver compatibility in a mixed environment means significant cost savings compared with upgrading or re-writing applications for IE7:

“There’s no doubt that the cost of developing and upgrading all our applications bears no comparison with the cost of rolling out Virtual Browser” says Albert Levigne, CIO – Lyon CCI.

Why choose Virtual Browser by commonIT?

The Lyon Chamber of Commerce and Industry chose Virtual Browser for:

• The ease of deployment of the Virtual Browser agent to 600 end-points.
• End-user performance and ease of use.
• The innovative approach which resolved the compatibility problem much more cost-effectively than a program of updating or redeveloping older applications for compatibility with the latest generation of browsers.

ECS, the European leader in IT infrastructure management with a turnover of €1.9bn, is holding its very first Partner Days on 1st and 2nd October at the Château Saint-Just near Paris, and commonIT has been invited to participate. The aim of the Partner Days, which will consist of a series of information and technical and sales training sessions, is to develop joint business opportunities by offering innovative, value-added technology solutions to clients of ECS and its partners.

The event will be attended by around 300 people from all over Europe. Representing ECS will be the Board of Directors, the Product Managers, the Sales and presales teams, technical support and Project Managers. An opportunity for us at commonIT to develop a tighter relationship with a valuable partner.

Does what, exactly? Why, winning the Monaco Grand Prix, of course! When commonIT heads for Monaco next month we won’t be trying to emulate Formula 1 drivers (though some of the team regret this) — but we’re going there to win.

From October 7th to 10th around a thousand of the most senior CSOs representing practically every major enterprise, ministry and government and local authority agency in France will be in Monaco for the ninth annual “Assises de la sécurité” get-together. As one of the sponsors of the event commonIT will man a stand for the three days of conferences and workshops, and deliver a 40 minute workshop on virtualisation and browser security. Through a partnership with the French edition of Global Security Mag all delegates will also receive a copy of a new white paper on enterprise web security developped by commonIT — the English version will be available shortly, watch this blog!

The three days of close interaction with high-level contacts from every sector of the French economy are a once-a-year opportunity to reach key decision makers, to spread the Virtual Browser message, to listen to their needs, and to detect new business opportunities. That’s why we’re sending a team of three people; commonIT will represented by Daniel, Albino and myself. Just like Jenson Button, we’re going there to win. But we’ll be driving a little more slowly.

The summer holiday period offered little rest for the information security specialist, with a series of browser and plugin vulnerabilities coming to light. Mathieu covered them here, here and here.

Then last week news broke that as many as 57,000 websites (a later report increases the estimate to 70,000) are contaminated with a malicious javascript. And we’re not talking about obscure pages on dubious, rarely visited websites in the outer reaches of the internet; a major New York hospital, medical charities, educational institutes, and a legal partnership all figure in the list of infected sites.

Back in the days when the floppy disk (for those who remember them) was the main method by which viruses were transmitted from one PC to the next, it was common for enterprise administrators to remove or disable the drives. Given today’s security risks, questions must be asked about the future of the internet in the enterprise. Should internet access simply be banned for end users? That’s clearly not the way forward. The web is a powerful communications tool, boosting productivity and competitivity. Added to which today’s users are not just internet-aware, they’re practically dependent on the web and will revolt against any restrictions on access.

So how can the enterprise deliver end-user internet access without leaving its own networks and systems susceptible to attack? With Virtual Browser “internet access” no longer means “connected to the internet.” The end-user’s PC doesn’t bounce from website to potentially risky website following the user’s mouse clicks. The user connects to a browser instance running as a virtual machine hosted in the secure environment of the datacenter. It is this hosted browser which connects to the internet. It’s as if, back in the days of the floppy, we could read and write to the disk without inserting into the drive — so that there was no risk of viruses infecting our PC.

Clermont Communauté

Clermont Communauté brings together 21 municipalities based around the city of Clermont-Ferrand in the French Massif Central. As the only major urban center in the Auvergne region, Clermont Communauté plays a significant role in the regional economy and is a key university, sports and cultural focus for the region’s inhabitants. Covering an area of nearly 120 square miles, the 21 municipalities of Clermont Communauté service 283,200 residents.

The Information Systems department of Clermont Communauté manages and supports business-specific applications for the various operational departments of the community. It also acts as an IT service provider to the individual municipalities (with the exception of Clermont-Ferrand itself), which lack the resources to manage their own information systems.

Services provided include hosting, connectivity and support for email, an intranet, and a geographical information system (GIS) which is the basis of a Land Registry application used intensively by the municipalities. All services are required to support web access from any type of end-point and over any type of connection – high bandwidth is not always available in the more rural areas.

The problem

Previously Clermont Communauté relied on an SSL VPN solution from F5 Networks. However there were performance issues, with certain pages taking a long time to load or not displaying properly, and problems with support for Web 2.0 technologies such as Ajax and Java made certain applications unusable.

The solution, Virtual Browser

Virtual Browser resolves all the issues faced by Clermont Communauté, and delivers security, simplicity and performance even for users connecting over low-speed links.

The Virtual Browser solution is fully compatible with existing applications, transparently supporting Web 2.0 features.

Running on a dedicated server in the DMZ, Virtual Browser integrates seamlessly with the the existing infrastructure. The client software allowing user connection to the Virtual Browser server is easy to deploy and manage. The Virtual Browser solution puts Clermont Communauté in complete control of web-based access, from the end point device to the application server.

“The Virtual Browser solution integrates transparently with our existing infrastructure, we don’t have to make any modifications. It’s easy to use, it’s secure, and it delivers on performance.” - Patrice Rodier, Director of Information , Systems, Clermont Communauté

Why Virtual Browser

Reasons Clermont Communauté chose the Virtual Browser solution by commonIT:

• The innovative technology delivered a far superior answer to the problem of secure web access, compared with traditional solutions based on reverse proxies and SSL VPNs.

• Superior performance and ease of use for end users.

• Excellent level of reactivity and support from Virtual Browser developer commonIT during testing and validation of the project.

Thoroughly tested and validated by users and industry experts, Virtual Browser release 1.0, available immediately, fulfils market demands for secure, mobile access to web-based applications.

After several months of testing by potential customers and partners, we launch the release of version 1.0 of the Virtual Browser solution. “The way Virtual Browser is designed inherently protects the user’s PC and the network against web-based threats” said Joseph Latanicki, security architect at Theresis, the innovation laboratory of Thales Security, Solutions & Services division, one of the industry specialists who has tested the solution. “It also facilitates the control of web usage in the enterprise, including analysis of content delivered over https connections. But looking beyond the security features, Virtual Browser also offers other key features making it easier for enterprises to deploy web-based application access”. In fact the Virtual Browser architecture, in addition to its “secure by design” guarantee, allows the enterprise to design and deploy new web services without having to worry about compatibility with multiple browser  solutions and releases or the problems of security on remote or mobile terminals. The optimum browser for any application is offered transparently to the user by the virtualisation architecture.

The RSA Spring conference in San Francisco (20th-24th April) is a worldwide showcase for security technologies. It’s an opportunity we wouldn’t want to miss. But with just three months between the date we incorporated and the event in San Francisco, the logistics of organizing our presence as an exhibitor while managing all the other aspects of getting our business up and running would have been overwhelming.

But RSA has (in a sense) come to our rescue! This year’s conference includes a side dish called the RSA Innovation Sandbox. Basically a start-up competition, RSA invites innovators like commonIT to sign up to deliver a four minute presentation and demo of their technology to a panel of industry gurus.

At the last count we were one of nearly 30 companies competing. If you’re registered to attend the RSA Conference you can help us by following this link and registering a vote for Virtual Browser.

And should we reach San Francisco, there’ll be a glass of Anchor Steam for any of our supporters we meet up with! Meanwhile here’s a preview of our 30 second demo video.

Virtual Browser has started to get attention from IT press and we are proud to present you some articles talking about commonIT’s launch.

Among them, a long interview in Global Security Mag and some news on specialized French web sites like Security Vibes and Mag securs.

But this is just the beginning…

A new infected web page is discovered every 4.5 seconds… It’s not me who says this, but leading antivirus vendor Sophos in its annual security report. Every January all the anti-malware vendors publish their statistics, and all agree on one thing: threats are targeting web applications.

You’ll find an interesting discussion of the problem on this blog.

There’s good news, though, as well as bad news. The bad news: with businesses moving more and more of their applications — even the most critical — onto the web, following the Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing trends, the web is going to remain the No. 1 focus for malware developpers for the next few years. The good news: the Virtual Browser solution is more than ever the perfect response, protecting users and the enterprise against web-based attacks. Stress-free internet!

Surfing on our ”stress-free blog” you can find our vision of web security and our perception of the IT market… But, to better understand this vision, you probably need more details about us and about our innovation, Virtual Browser.

Virtual Browser is a new web browser that guarantees security and mobility by design.

Virtual Browser does not run on the user device but in a dedicated secure environment, on a virtual machine in a DMZ or “in the cloud”. Only presentation data (image, sound, keyboard, mouse,  print, etc.) are displayed on the user’s computer. The core of the browser runs on the remote software appliance, ensuring that attacks are unable to hit user data, end ponit devices or the network. Moreover Virtual Browser isolates web sessions on separate virtual machines according to their security level. This means business critical web services (such as CRM, online banking and so on) are safe and isolated from user web surfing.

Virtual Browser can also play the role of a remote client to access internal web applications. For mobile users, Virtual Browser maintains the user environment, so that the user always gets their personal bookmarks and cookies even when connecting from different devices - including PDAs and smartphones.

By the way, Virtual Browser can be used as a secure client to facilitate customer or partner access to enterprise web applications. With Virtual Browser the company can not only protect customers but also controla how they access business services. Because no IP connexion is mounted between the user’s computer and the application server, there is no risk of contamination from an infected device (so no need for end-point integity checking).