Opening the eyes of the private and public sectors to the pros and cons of using open source software for Internet security is the SECRETS project, which evaluated two protocols in a series of trials covering e-commerce, mobile communications, network monitoring and intelligent networks.
Although the IST programme-funded project ended in December 2002, "the results of the evaluations still apply today," according to technical coordinator Ross Velentzas at Motorola.
SECRETS looked at the open source toolkit for implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) provided by OpenSSL, and at the Free Secure Wide Area Network (FreeS/WAN) provided by IPSec over the Linux operating system. The results of both evaluations were mixed, highlighting the complications facing businesses and governments as they seek more cost-effective and efficient ways to ensure Internet security by turning to open source software instead of commercial systems.
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