Network security managers keep up with rapid technology growth

May 9, 2006 10:59 AM

The growth rate of threats to networked security systems is outpacing conventional wisdom and solutions, according to a report in Mass High Tech, the Journal of New England Technology.
Current trends in corporate purchasing of emerging intrusion detection/prevention and associated technologies are driven by the need to maintain data security as the mobile-technology and remote-access age explodes, while still allowing business to flow normally, the article says.
According to a 2006 survey of North American IT security managers by Computer Economics, companies with annual revenue exceeding $750 million devote fewer dollars in relative spending to IT security than small and mid-sized firms. Large firms also typically deploy cutting-edge security-management practices and adopt new security technology solutions at a slower rate.
"We see network access control (NAC) technologies much more widely adopted now, for example, but slower than you'd expect given the essential nature of those protections," Chris Liebert, a senior analyst at Boston-based research analysis company The Yankee Group, tells Mass High Tech.
Market uncertainty in the realm of security policy enforcement may be the culprit. Alliances among network, security and server infrastructure vendors remain sketchy, and investment requirements for new authentication and network equipment are considerable.
Further complicating matters is that the notion of a silver-bullet network security solution, which, unfortunately, does not exist. In addition, given that mobile hardware and related technologies are still emerging -- no one knows what a mature worldwide VoIP network will look like, for instance -- detailed security analysis of such technologies is incomplete.
In an Aberdeen Group study published earlier this year, 33 percent of respondents to a national heath care provider security survey reported a security incident or patient-privacy breach since July 2005, while another 22 percent conceded they "did not know" if such an intrusion had occurred.
Ever-heightening vulnerability is driving holistic strategies for addressing network-security needs.
"There's no one answer to solve every security challenge," Stacey Quandt, security solutions and services research director for Aberdeen Group, tells the publication. "It requires a collection of technologies. Given the amount of data in flow with the explosion of handheld devices and applications, security is not a case of one size fits all and definitely not a case of one solution being sufficient."
Two competing security-management approaches continue to battle for supremacy; one is built upon network infrastructure devices quarantining unhealthy endpoints, the other is designed around specialized gateways that limit suspect endpoints' network access at the application level.
In addition to network access control technologies, which authorize users based upon the security posture of the device they are using to access the network, industry analysts report that network behavior analysis (NBA) and identity-based access technologies are driving corporate purchasing.
"Network behavior analysis solutions are particularly attractive because they offer non-signature-based threat detection," the Yankee Group's Liebert tells the publication. "They alleviate major problems on the internal network by monitoring what's happening on the network and by flagging anomalies."
A layered defense approach to network security is expected to predominate throughout the corporate purchasing culture over the next two years. According to the Yankee Group, every major security vendor is still working to fill holes in their endpoint security suites.

Read more about the convergence of physical and IT security in IP Security, a supplemental publication from Access Control & Security Systems, available in May.

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