Networkers take security seriously

Johannesburg, 23 Feb 2005

Increasingly sophisticated security threats, such as network intrusions and viruses, have caused network vendors to rethink the way they view security.

On a recent visit to SA, Stephen Macri, Enterasys regional VP of northern Europe and SA, and Mark Pearce, the company`s product marketing manager, pointed out that the company rebranded and refocused last year to make its products more security-oriented.

"When we look at enterprise architecture, we now have to look at offering end-users something beyond just connectivity. Security has become a major issue internationally, that is why a lot of governments are even making it part of their legislation," Pearce says.

Local Enterasys country manager Martin May notes that as end-users start considering the convergence of their networks, security is beginning to take on paramount importance.

"A security breach in a converged environment could prove to be even more critical to an organisation because it could potentially break down its entire communication system," he says.

The company is looking at security on the network from both the software and hardware side, with management tools being based on actual company security policies.

Macri comments that network security systems are now becoming more proactive than reactive and have to be intelligent enough to be fully effective even in heterogeneous environments.

Crafty cyber criminals

[VIDEO]Cisco Systems SA systems engineer, Martin Walshaw, notes that the recent spate of worms demonstrated that cyber criminals are building more intelligent viruses and worms, which demand companies to take security more seriously and become more proactive.

Larger organisations tend to take security more seriously, he says, while smaller businesses believe that once a firewall and anti-virus solution have been installed, the network will be protected, but this is not the case.

Walshaw adds that not all products on the market are able to cope with the self-propagating nature of virus threats out in the wild, with issues such as "zero days" viruses and denial-of-service attacks making up a fair chunk of today`s threat payloads.

He says security needs to be incorporated into the business like any other ICT aspect. "IDC puts it very clearly, saying that a company has excellent security when nobody hears about it," notes Walshaw.

This, he says, boils down to the concept of the self-defending network, a multi-part security initiative designed to improve the ability of networks to identify, prevent and adapt to security threats.

Apart from the obvious benefits of effective security solutions, smaller companies will see real benefits from a compliance perspective, bearing in mind the demands of regulations such as King II and the ECT Act.

The self-defending network

[VIDEO]Cisco, like Enterasys, is emphasising self-defending networks. The intelligence built into its solutions enables its routers to enforce network access privileges, based on endpoint information. This will eventually span almost every element of the security solution including software, network access equipment, policy management and network management.

Some industry players have questioned whether networking vendors` focus on security might create a bittersweet relationship between them and security vendors.

However, Kaan Terzioglu, Cisco`s director of advanced technologies for EMEA, says because the vendors` security focus is anomaly detection, the anti-virus vendors will continue to be content providers, so the two will continue to collaborate.