The Jericho Forum has announced a “sundown” after ten years of developing ideas and concepts on the future of security.
At the Open Group conference in central London, original board member and co-founder Paul Simmonds announced that the think tank was coming to an end. He said: “Ten years ago the Jericho Forum’s mission was to put de-perimeterisation on the map of business security challenges, because it wasn’t being done in any other security group.
“When we formed, we pledged to stay focused on de-perimeterisation and directly related areas, and not to morph into just ‘another group defining good security’. Our aim was to one day declare ‘job-done’ and disband.”
Simmonds recounted the history of the Forum, which began as a “supper and discussion club for CISOs” that slowly got press and industry attention, and more members from around the world. After the first year it published its commandments, that Simmonds called “eleven principles to be adopted when designing for a de-perimeterised future”.
“I’m proud to say that these have more than stood test of time – and we keep finding, with every new development in computing such as Cloud Computing, BYOD, ‘Internet of Things’ and IPv6 that they are even more relevant today than when we first wrote them,” he said.
“From the outset, the reaction from some parts of the industry which has for the last 20 years been serviced by sales-people telling us ‘you’ve got a problem’, ‘let me sell you my solution’ was in hindsight rather predictable. In the face of the Jericho Forum telling them about the disappearance of their security perimeter their response was ‘what do you mean I have to re-architect and align with my businesses needs – can’t I just buy an appliance’? So to help them, in 2009 we published the Collaboration Oriented Architectures (COA) Framework, and in 2010 we launched the Jericho Commandments Self-Assessment Scheme, giving the end-user a list of ‘nasty questions’ they should be asking of their vendors.”
Following the work around owning identities, Simmonds confirmed that rather than closing the think tank, that its legacy of deliverables will continue to be maintained by The Open Group’s security forum.
He said: “In 2003 we set out to change the computing and information security world and I’d like to think history will record that we succeeded. I’d like to conclude by borrowing from the words of one James T Kirk: ‘These were the voyages of the Jericho Forum. Its ten-year mission: to explore strange new security architectures, to seek out new solutions and support new business paradigms, to boldly go where no security professional has gone before’.”
Speaking to IT Security Guru, forum member Guy Bunker said that there are very few industry “blue sky” bodies that ever get to ten years old,
and who make a difference on a topic as Jericho have done. “It is all on de-perimeterisation as organisations understand it, and they realise it is a concept on which they can work, including cloud and identity, and take de-perimeterisation, the perimeter has changed from being around the organisation to being around data and from a cloud perspective, now it is move to an individual so you can apply it everywhere,” he said.
and who make a difference on a topic as Jericho have done. “It is all on de-perimeterisation as organisations understand it, and they realise it is a concept on which they can work, including cloud and identity, and take de-perimeterisation, the perimeter has changed from being around the organisation to being around data and from a cloud perspective, now it is move to an individual so you can apply it everywhere,” he said.
“Today, while the Jericho Forum will no longer exist, its vision will live on and I am proud to have been a part of this space.”
Allen Brown, president and CEO of The Open Group, said: “Jericho Forum members were initially criticised by many vendors, users and some analysts and press who failed to understand that de-perimeterisation was the challenge, not the solution. Sadly, while a few still fail in this regard, the security industry en-mass now accepts de-perimeterisation and the knock-on effects also predicted by the Jericho Forum, such as BYOD and cloud computing as fact, and acknowledge the visionary work done by the Jericho Forum.”
Brown concluded by saying that it was proud to have demonstrated its leadership in understanding and supporting activities on key architectural and manageability challenges that arise in our information technology industry, through supporting expert visionary initiatives such as the Jericho Forum has represented.
