Aerospace Daily
January 15, 2002
By Jefferson Morris

El Al Israel Airlines has selected Sanctum Inc.'s AppShield 3.1 firewall software to enhance the security of the company's Internet-based data and operations, Sanctum announced Jan. 14.

Particularly since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, El Al is taking very seriously any illegal access to data or transactions through the company's website, according to David Yaacobi, the airline's manager of information systems security.

"You have to be protected," Yaacobi told The DAILY. "You have to be protected [so] nobody will destroy your business, nobody will steal information, nobody will deface your website and nobody will take your system down."

The problem of website hacking is one that every company faces on a daily basis, he added.

"Not every attack is serious, but you can see people every day try to attack websites," he said.

A web application firewall program, AppShield will prevent the illegal manipulation of any electronic information accessible through the El Al website, according to Sanctum. AppShield sits in front of web servers, acting as a proxy and intercepting all requests, while analyzing outgoing web pages and generating security policies on the fly for each.

The program is designed to provide automatic protection against various types of web application attacks, including server-based worms, by monitoring for correct use of the application, blocking the attacker's unauthorized actions, logging IP information, and alerting administrators to all attack attempts.

AppShield is the first commercial software product to provide e-businesses and service providers with continuous, autonomous protection against Web application attacks, according to Sanctum.

Cybersecurity a 'key element'
"Securing web applications needs to be a key element of every company's overall IT security plan, especially in the aviation industry, where malicious hacker activity poses an immediate threat," said John Pescatore, vice president of research, information security at the consulting firm Gartner Group.

"Application-specific firewalls will become increasingly important for enterprises, especially as they start exposing critical business processes with web services," he said.

Currently, El Al has "firewalls, and intrusion detection systems, and we have many kinds of systems that try to catch hackers that try to go into the website ... but the Sanctum system is the first one that makes full application protection on the web," Yaacobi said.

El Al Israel Airlines is ranked by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) as number one in the categories of security, pilots, and aircrew. The company is held by the Israeli government and was established in 1949 as the national airline of Israel. El Al has 77 sales offices, 3,500 employees and more than 50 flight destinations worldwide.

Founded in 1997 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., Sanctum, Inc. is a privately held company funded by venture capital firms and industry leaders including Sprout Group, Dell, Gemini Israel Funds, Fidelity Ventures, First Union eVentures Group, Mofet Israel Technology Fund, and Walden Israel.