07/01/2008

Epok Inc., a provider of federated access management software that allows organizations to securely extend application access across organizational boundaries, today announced that it has partnered with IMPACT to provide the software foundation for its Global Response Center.

ebizQ received the following:

The Epok Edition for Microsoft SharePoint will serve as the authorization platform for its Global Response Center. At the IMPACT World Cyber Security Summit, Mohd Noor Amin, Chairman of IMPACT, announced that IMPACT has engaged Epok to provide secure access to communication and collaboration applications across IMPACT’s global network of countries, private sector, and non-governmental organizations.

IMPACT was officially launched in May at the World Cyber Security Summit as the world’s largest public-private partnership on cyber security. IMPACT will focus on four key areas to help combat cyber-terrorism: Global response, policy and international collaboration, training and skills development, and security assurance and research. IMPACT’s Global Response Center serves as the foremost cyber-threat resource center for the global community complete with an emergency response center to facilitate swift identification and sharing of available resources to assist member-governments during emergencies. IMPACT maintains a comprehensive database of international experts from the world's leading ICT companies and members of academia who can be called into service at short notice. IMPACT's role also includes establishing a comprehensive Early Warning System for the benefit of all member-countries and providing proactive protection across the globe.

Epok software lets organizations securely extend application access across organizational boundaries -- within and between enterprises. With the Epok Edition for Microsoft SharePoint, organizations can have a single point of control for external access to all SharePoint deployments across the enterprise, leveraging business users and partner managers in the extranet access management process, and integrating business and regulatory constructs into every user activity.

The Epok Edition for Microsoft SharePoint serves as the foundation for the IMPACT Global Response Center by managing user access to information resources across the globally distributed IMPACT network. Using Epok software, IMPACT can rapidly respond to emerging cyber-threats by activating response teams composed of distributed cyber-threat experts, industry experts and members from affected countries so that the right information gets to the right people to support analysis and response.

"The IMPACT Global Response Centre is the focal point in our mission to help nations respond to cyber attacks," said Mohd Noor Amin, Chairman of IMPACT. "Through our partnership with Epok, we are able to provide IMPACT’s global community of cyber experts the tools they need to securely collaborate and rapidly respond to new threats."

"IMPACT fills a critical and unmet need to protect digital infrastructure from globally distributed cyber attacks," said Fred Giordano, Chief Executive Officer of Epok. "Supporting IMPACT’s operations is a significant access and security challenge because of its highly distributed membership encompassing government, private sector, and non-governmental organizations, as well as standards bodies and individual contributors. We are very excited our software will be used by IMPACT to help these diverse organizations and individuals work together to fight cyber-threats."