By David Silsby, Sales & Marketing Director, Netutils

Views expressed in this post are original thoughts posted by David Silsby, Sales & Marketing Director, Netutils. These views are his own and in no way do they represent the views of the company.

Last week was a very busy one for us folks at Netutils as we partnered with Juniper Networks at IP EXPO 2013. It was great to meet up with so many of our customers and meet many new customers equally passionate about securing their networks and data.

One of the highlights of this event was Henrick Davidsson’s presentation on Securing the Data Centre, Going Beyond IP’ on Day 1 in the Security & Governance Theatre.

Here are some key points he made during his presentation:

The Threats are Real
IT Security professionals around the world are faced with a constantly changing battleground when it comes to dealing with cyber threats.  The number of devices that need to be protected within an organisation now averages 3.5 per employee, and 60% of victims don’t discover that they have had a breech for weeks and in some case months and research has shown that the average cost of these breaches is as high as $11m.

Next Generation Firewalls aren’t the Only Solution
Next generation firewalls with their ability to provide application specific visibility and control, active directory integration and the ability to apply policies based on users, devices, locations etc. are a critical part of the defence. However, 60% of security professionals when asked agreed that they are an essential part of the defence, but don’t fully address the problem. We have to always be aware that our security defences are only as strong as the weakest point.

There are two specific areas organisations have to consider – ingress and egress. From a branch and campus perspective, i.e. the end user community, the challenge is to secure the flow of information going out into cyberspace.

From the data centre perspective it is crucial to protect and secure the perimeter from those who are constantly on the prowl trying to steal the ‘crown jewels’ of our data, applications and intellectual property.

DDoS Attacks on the Increase
In a recent survey 60% of companies reported that they had been hacked or been targets of DDoS attacks in the past 12 months. Some of these attacks it appears seem to have been performed ‘just for the heck of it’, whilst others have been specifically targeted and have real malicious intent.

DDoS attacks are often easy to spot as it’s like an army of 10,000 men charging over the hill. However, once we spot them we still have to address the onslaught. Recently however the Diversionary DDoS and APPDDoS attacks are becoming more prevalent. The challenge here is spot these because we might be so busy dealing with the ‘charging 10,000 army’ that we miss the hacker sneaking in the targeted threat that is happening on the flank. A recent victim of this was Bank of the West in the USA during a holiday period when staff numbers were low.  Whilst the attackers launched a DDoS attack they managed to target and breach another vulnerable area and successfully stole $900k from various accounts.

Juniper Provides a Security Ecosystem that Adapts at the Speed of Risk
Juniper Networks’ have two specific solutions to enhance the protection provided by Next Generation Firewalls. Firstly Junos DDoS Secure which provides the ability to use a behavioural approach to detect and stop these low and slow style attacks.

Secondly, Junos Web App Secure , which looks at two areas – Certainty and Specificity. This ensures that you are blocking the right activity without impacting your business, and identifying malicious behaviour that other solutions can’t even start to think about finding.

Using an approach called Intrusion Deception, Junos WebApp Secure can identify attackers with certainty. Unlike legacy signature-based approaches, Junos WebApp Secure uses deceptive techniques and inserts detection points, or tar traps, into the code of outbound Web application traffic to proactively identify attackers before they do damage.

In summary, Juniper provides a Security Ecosystem that adapts at the speed of risk, where allowing easy access is balanced with stopping attackers from getting what they want.

At Netutils we are committed to helping our customers identify their weak points in their defences and then shoring them up to ensure they get the protection they really need. Partnering with Juniper Networks makes that job all the more easy.