SafeMashups sets foundation for increased visibility and control in cloud computing

Application Authentication Pioneer Announces Its Intention to Deliver The First Trust Infrastructure Purpose Built for Cloud Computing; Names Industry Veteran Lynn Terwoerds as Vice President of Business Development

 San Francisco, CA, RSA Conference 2010, March 1, 2010: SafeMashups Inc., an application authentication pioneer, today announced two key milestones in the evolution of the company; first, it has named IT security industry veteran Lynn Terwoerds as vice president of Business Development. Second, the Company also announced its intention to market its first commercial product, the Cloud Trust Broker. The overwhelmingly positive response to MashSSL combined with the intense industry focus on cloud computing led SafeMashups to direct development efforts on helping to secure cloud architectures. The Cloud Trust Broker will provide the level of visibility and control over inter and intra cloud communication needed to remove the security and compliance obstacles currently hindering mass adoption of cloud computing models.

“Over the course of evangelizing MashSSL, the benefits of extending it into cloud visibility and control became apparent.   As a result, we have architected the SafeMashups Cloud Trust Broker,” said Ravi Ganesan, CEO, SafeMashups.  “Our next goal is to productize MashSSL around existing and developing open standards. Having Lynn Terwoerds - a recognized leader in the emerging cloud security space join me in this endeavor is a huge plus. I couldn’t be more delighted to be working with someone of her vision, abilities, understanding of security and position in the community.”

As Vice President of Business Development for SafeMashups, Lynn Terwoerds will work to bring SafeMashups Cloud Trust Broker to market, with a special focus on developing and managing strategic relationships.  Highly respected in both business and technical circles, Lynn is an active member of the Cloud Security Alliance and leads its cloud security metrics working group.

Before joining SafeMashups, Lynn Terwoerds was the head of Security Architecture and Standards for Barclay’s global retail and commercial bank based in London. Prior to that she spent over eight years with Microsoft leading efforts in security response, Trustworthy Computing and critical infrastructure protection. Before entering the software industry, she worked with various solutions integrators providing consulting services to Fortune 100 companies, giving her 20 years overall IT industry experience. She is a CISSP, CEH and holds a Master’s degree in Classics. 

“Cloud computing introduces so many fantastic opportunities such as on demand, elastic provisioning of services at a fraction of the cost, “ said Lynn Terwoerd, co-founder and vice president of Business Development, SafeMashups.  “But along with that comes the responsibility of security and compliance in a highly distributed, virtualized and diverse ecosystem where it’s technically hard to achieve the level of transparency and accountability customers rightly demand.  SafeMashups grabbed my attention because it intelligently and elegantly overcomes major technical hurdles and provides a tangible way for customers to gain visibility, compliance and control in the cloud.”

Experts, Pundits and Press on MashSSL:

  • SafeMashups, Entrust, Digicert, VeriSign and others launch MashSSL Alliance in November 2009 to establish MashSSL open standard under the guidance of the W3C MashSSL XG.
  • SafeMashups named one of “11 Security Companies to Watch,” Network World Magazine,
  • This sounds like a tool that is right on the spot – timing is right, technology is right, the need is here...If you are into mashups, MashSSL is a must-have!” Are you mashing things up? MashSSL to your resque!, (sic) Kai Roer, Roer.com Information Security Blog.
  • "For mashups to become ubiquitous, a trust infrastructure is needed.... this approach allows him to layer SSL and certificates on top of the Web 2.0 protocols without requiring any change to these protocols. Brilliant!" Nico Popp, Vice President of Innovation, VeriSign Inc. ,in his Blue Ocean Blog

Cloud Security’s Best-Friend-in-the-Middle: Introducing The Cloud Trust Broker
Leveraging the multi-party properties of MashSSL, the Cloud Trust Broker is purpose built to broker communication between different parts of a private or public cloud, or for intra cloud communications.

The architectural antithesis of the uninvited, malicious man-in the middle scenario  - one of the most severe and hardest to protect against browser based attacks, the Cloud Trust Broker acts as a trusted ‘Friend-in-the-Middle’ that provides a secure, trusted pipe through which it mediates traffic directly.

The Company is engineering the product to support use by a single enterprise, but is also building in multi tenancy features that would make it well suited for a SAAS offering either by SafeMashups or by one of its numerous trust provider partners.   For more information on the Cloud Trust Broker, the MashSSL specification, the MashSSL Alliance or SafeMashups, please visit www.safemashups.com.

About SafeMashups:
SafeMashups, Inc., is an application authentication pioneer and the developer of the MashSSL protocol.  MashSSL is a multi-party trust protocol that provides a standardized way for Web applications to securely identify each other when mashing through a potentially untrusted browser. SafeMashups' free MashSSL Web Toolkit and community service offering provide a comprehensive trust infrastructure for mashup applications.  Currently under development, SafeMashup’s flagship enterprise offering, the Cloud Trust Broker, leverages MashSSL to provide level of visibility into and control over communications needed to drive the widespread adoption of cloud computing.  For more information of SafeMashups, visit http://www.safemashups.com.