Intranet security: an increasing concern in industrial environments

Operating as a corporate information system, intranets can give employees point-and-click access to a comprehensive range of resources. Moreover, they can facilitate communication between different business processes in the company, such as marketing and sales, engineering, manufacturing and distribution. On the other hand, by adopting the proper security measures, controlled access to sensitive information can be given to partners, suppliers and customers, giving feasibility to an electronic data interchange (EDI) scenario using the internet as its communication infrastructure. Here, the authors present an overview of the potential security problems faced by any industrial enterprise trying to become a "global enterprise", as well as the technologies behind the presently available solutions.