An assortment of methods to prevent Web hacks and network breaches littered the NetWorld+Interop 2000 floor last month as security companies offered their latest products to safeguard users.
With a rash of recent high-profile break-ins still fresh on their minds, conference attendees kept their eyes on finding intrusion detection methods that are tailored to meet their specific needs, said Eric Hemmendinger, senior analyst of information security at Boston-based Aberdeen Group Inc.
“It’s not so much of what’s bigger and better as much as what’s better able to meet [user] needs,” Hemmendinger said.
Simpler ways of deploying security software in a complex environment, having security better equipped to meet sophisticated exploits and attacks, and having it better handle higher levels of traffic are current areas of concern on customers’ minds, Hemmendinger added.
During N+I, Internet Security Systems Corp. (ISS) and Top Layer Networks Inc. announced a partnership that will protect speedy networks, covering networks at as many as 800MBps, with intrusion detection software, said Mark Wood, director of product management at Atlanta-based ISS.
Wood said ISS’s RealSecure intrusion detection and Westboro, Mass.-based Top Layer’s AppSwitch will be configured to work in conjunction with one another. Through the shared technology, AppSwitch will use load balancing to divide a network traffic stream and send the information back to a mutual management system to be protected by RealSecure.
Hemmendinger said smaller security companies have paid attention to what many of their larger brethren already have offered and are looking for ways to improve upon that technology. One part of that is gearing new products toward the obscured small to midsize market.
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., based in Redwood City, Calif., launched a suite of security appliances to work with its just-announced VPN-1/Firewall-SmallOffice software. The products, built in conjunction with Richardson, Tex.-based Intrusion.com and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Ramp Networks, gives small offices the same access control, management, logging and network address translation features of the company’s flagship security software, said Jim Lima, Check Point partner marketing manager.
Lima said the company would also release a beefed-up version of its FloodGate-1 QoS {quality-of service) product during the week of Interop.
A couple of fledgling security companies catering to the midmarket, including SecureWorks, used the N+I stage as a launching pad.
SecureWorks, based in Atlanta, will use the popular services model to shield customers from Internet attacks including Web site vandalism, port scanning, viruses and information theft and destruction. Designed to protect companies with 250 or fewer users per location, the SecureWorks service includes an iSensor security appliance to monitor all inbound and outbound traffic, with immediate response time provided from the company’s Internet Monitoring Security Center, company officials said.
Woodland, Calif.-based Captus Networks Corp. will launch its first security product, CaptIO. The 12-port CaptIO combines the functionality of a router, firewall, intrusion detection and load balancer in a single rack unit device.