New virus threats, including spyware, spam, trojans, adware and mutated forms of malware, delivering blended attacks, are appearing daily and computer users are taking the full brunt of this seemingly never ending onslaught without suitable armour.
This is the view of Karel Rode, a security specialist at Computer Associates Africa, who says users must first consolidate independent elements in their corporate security arsenal before being able to meet the challenge.
"In many companies today there are separate anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion detection and other security-related software packages working independently from one another.
"Without being integrated, they leave `security holes`, and these vulnerabilities are regularly exploited by those with mal-intent."
Rode says the quest for consolidation has led to a debate around the benefits of the so-called security "appliance" - a single, fully integrated security solution in a box.
"The security appliance is still on the drawing board, but its development momentum is such that in the foreseeable future up to 80% of all security solutions could be delivered via such a dedicated device."
How far will convergence push these devices? Will we see a `god box` containing every conceivable security application available - as some analysts predict?
Rode says that before this happens an upgrade of the current Intel architecture will be required. "The Intel architecture of today will not be suitable for the high speed - gigabit speed - connections that will be required by a god box or any other security appliance of the future which will be called upon to perform many concurrent tasks, including all the traditional gateway functions of anti-virus and e-mail content inspection programs.
"These devices will also have to act as firewalls and perform URL filtering and spam identification over the user`s public, internal and virtual private network links," he says.
Despite these challenges, Rode maintains that the shift to appliance-based devices that are ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) based with software programming code embedded in custom processors, is a certainty.
"This is because users are demanding fewer interfaces and points of management - points of access - from the vendors," he notes. "The security appliance will meet these objectives."
Rode says that while there are those who predict a mass application of security appliances before the end of the decade, there are others who believe their popularity will be short-lived.
"Like the Hoola Hoop, security appliances could have a brief appearance on the IT industry`s stage," he says.
"Although they are a vital link in the evolutionary chain, their viability could well be compromised by new-generation identity and enterprise management systems.
"These systems already offer features like sophisticated corporate-wide access control and they rely on well defined data classification, structured vulnerability management, and remediation processes."
Rode says that within the South African market, characterised by a dearth of Internet bandwidth, a strong growth in Internet converged solutions that offer e-content management will emerge.
"These yet-to-be-developed systems will stop short of wearing a `security appliance` badge and its price tag, but will nevertheless be integrated software solutions in their own right.
"Key to their effectiveness will be their centralised, self-management functions - such as `white listing` of e-mail addresses and exception management of URLs - and their ability to automatically initiate threat mitigation responses through enterprise-wide vulnerability management and remediation functions.
"These and other security solutions that work well within limited bandwidth constraints - such as push technology that understands hierarchical deployments over WANs for distributed systems - will emerge as eventual winners," stresses Rode.
"When integrated into enterprise management and reporting systems, they will give security incident response teams access to significantly more content rich data than currently received from isolated incident logs associated with point solutions.
"They will go a long way towards providing the `value-add` that so many users are currently demanding of their security systems," he adds.
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Computer Associates International, Inc (NYSE:CA), one of the world`s largest management software companies, delivers software and services across operations, security, storage, lifecycle and service management to optimise the performance, reliability and efficiency of enterprise IT environments. Founded in 1976, CA is headquartered in Islandia, New York, and serves customers in more than 140 countries. For more information, please visit http://ca.com.
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