AT&amp;T Builds In Network Security
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AT&amp;T (Quote, Chart) announced a new version of its predictive service designed to help protect far-flung businesses from worms and viruses without deploying firewalls at each location.
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AT&T is expanding its network infrastructure in the Middle East and building up its local presence there.
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(InfoWorld) - Enterprise companies will soon begin offloading many of their network security responsibilities to telecommunications and Internet service providers and save vast amounts of time and money doing so, if AT&T has its way. Speaking to the assembled crowd at the IDC Security Forum in New York on Wednesday, Edward Amoroso, chief security officer for AT&T's services division, predicted that enterprises will begin adopting more "virtual" security capabilities from their ISPs and bandwidth providers in the coming years as those companies are better positioned to do battle with botnets, spam, and denial-of-service )DoS) threats. Based on the bandwidth-providers' existing abilities to see spikes in traffic that are tell-tale signs of botnet, spam, or other malware activity -- long before enterprises can see evidence of the attacks on their own -- Amoroso contends that companies will soon concede the process of fighting the threats and turn to companies such as AT&T for help. "We think that security at the perimeter should be virtual, which is a somewhat controversial concept, because a lot of time, effort, and career capital has already been spent securing the perimeter," Amoroso said. "But we think a lot of existing technologies there are running out of legs, and simply running firewalls at the gateway is no longer a valuable proposition." The United States government's Telecommunications act of 1996 prevents carriers from approaching customers and marketing services to them based on any trends they observe on the end users' network connections. However, the companies can already identify much of the spam and malware activity being carried out in the pipe, based on their massive infrastructure, and should be enlisted to help solve security issues, he said. For threats such as distributed DoS that can easily be thwarted upstream, the CIO said, it makes little sense for companies to continue to invest in new technologies and staff when the carriers could easily detect and snuff out the campaigns ahead of time. "How do you stop DDoS at the edge? The physics just don't make sense. When these attacks happen, the customers' routers will already be dead," said Amoroso. "We think the idea that the pipe should be dumb is strange; with spam accounting for 90 percent of all traffic on the e-mail pipe, we're delivering nothing but more attacks, malware, and junk. If people want us to keep doing that we can, but why would they want us to keep doing that when we can see it, scoop it, study it, and stop it?" Lest someone should contend that AT&T and other carriers are merely licking their chops at the prospect of adding pricey new security services to their products, the expert said security services should eventually become a set of non-optional capabilities included with the purchase of ISP and telephony services. Much as the carrier community focused on providing faster services in the 1980s and added tools to improve quality to their products in the 1990s, the CIO said that security services will become a de facto element of all the capabilities that the firms market. While early adopters are already paying a premium to use the security capabilities offered by carriers today, eventually the price should be blended into the packages of capabilities that companies buy from providers such as AT&T, the expert predicted. At the same time, AT&T and other carriers would have to sacrifice their existing businesses of selling firewall management and intrusion detection-type systems into enterprises, he said. But the move to push security tools to the bandwidth providers is one that has been made even more likely by the complexity of those technologies. "I think we'll come out of this decade thinking it was silly to have separate perimeter security systems, it doesn't make sense to build the network and overlay security as an afterthought," Amoroso said. "We have as large of a managed security services business as anyone, but this work is better off embedded in the pipeline." Emerging mobile and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services will also include integrated security capabilities that replace many of the systems being implemented to protect those technologies today, according to the AT&T CIO. "We can virtualize these things, and any carrier can do it; this is the direction that perimeter security is headed in. It's not a collision course, but rather something very pleasant, as finally there's something smooth and simple to solve these problems," he said. "It's absurd that all we hear today is that the carrier plays no role in all of this, that companies should do it at the edge. We know it's a lot of work, but we're already prepared to do it."
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By Subashini Selvaratnam  SECURITY threats on networks are on the rise. To help arrest this problem, Sophos is launching two products that will enable IT departments to protect their network environment more effectively.
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Cisco Systems today is unveiling nine new software and hardware products, and upgrades to protect corporate computer networks from hackers and other Internet threats.
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By Jerri Stroud, St. Louis Post-Dispatch  Feb. 10--AT&T Inc. will start building a wireless network for Internet  access in downtown St. Louis as soon as the city issues permits, the company  said Friday after the Board of Aldermen approved its proposal.
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Top phone company AT&T Inc.   shrugged off concerns on Tuesday that it would need to build a  more expensive, all-fiber network to handle an expected surge  in high-speed Internet and video traffic.
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Company adds new features to its SSL VPN gateway to make sure devices connecting to a network are clean.
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(Source: AT&T) Optical network solutions from AT&T provide scalable, secure bandwidth to keep the health care provider and the patient connected, despite increasing network traffic.
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Vulnerabilities could allow attackers to gain remote control of a system, security company says.
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Perfigo's products will fit into Cisco's security architecture that combines virus scanning with network policing.
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Computer Associates International (CA) has released a new tool for managing and securing wireless networks that attracted significant customer interest when it was previewed earlier this year.
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Companies expand security alliance to help businesses keep worms and viruses from getting onto networks.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco SystemsÂ hasÂ expandedÂ aÂ range of security mechanisms for wired LANsÂ to theÂ wireless side of enterprise networks. The dominant LAN vendorÂ announceedÂ on Wednesday itÂ had upgraded its software and launched a set of guidelines for integrating wired and wireless security, called the Cisco Secure Wireless Solution. The new capabilities are available to any customer with current Cisco software, said Chris Kozup, manager of mobility solutions at Cisco. Customers can use the guidelines themselves to build a security architecture or enlist the help of Cisco's services organization or third parties. Enterprises are already able to bring wireless devices into Cisco's security system, which is built around ensuring any client is authorized and free of threats before it can hook up to the network. But bringing the same set of tools into the wireless domain can make that process easier, Kozup said. For example, if an enterprise wanted to secure wireless clients using Cisco's Network Access Control (NAC) appliance, the end user connecting via wireless would have to manually log into the NAC. Now that process can be transparent to the user, just as it is on the wired network, he said. In addition to the NAC, the architecture includes Cisco's ASA firewall, Cisco Security Agent (CSA), Cisco IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) software, Cisco Secure ACS (Access Control Server) and Cisco Secure Services Client. These long-time features of Cisco's wired security are being extended to wireless LANs as the company's latest step toward unifying wired and wireless into one network, Kozup said. The system makes the wired and wireless networks work together to bolster security. For example, if a notebook PC is connected to the LAN via a wired port, its wireless radio will be turned off automatically to prevent an attacker from using the wireless connection as a path on to the wired LAN. In addition, a Cisco wireless LAN controller, the mechanism in an appliance, router or switch that controls wireless infrastructure, can disconnect a wireless LAN client that poses a threat. The security built into all Wi-Fi products has improved in recent years and many vendors sell tools to secure wireless LANs, such as Aruba Wireless Networks Inc.'s technology that uses encrypted tunnels. Cisco's new approach may not be significantly more secure than those options, but it can simplify life for IT administrators, said Farpoint Group analyst Craig Mathias. For one thing, it's easier if security for both parts of the network uses a single directory of users, he said. Other approaches that are less expensive and more scalable can work just as well, according to Burton Group analyst Dave Passmore. "This is Cisco assuming the network perimeter needs to be protected right at the every edge, rather than a more centralized approach," Passmore said. There are no significant threats to an enterprise LAN that can't be handled from within the wired part of the network, he said.
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Shimon Systems, Inc., a leading provider of fingerprint-based access control solutions, has re-defined security for enterprise WiFi networks via its Bio-NetGuard(TM) WiFi Security Solution.
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IT security managers convening at two interrelated conferences in New York this week said their firms are adopting both new network defenses and organizational structures to lower risk of a data breach.
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Company is readying security software or cell phones and handheld devices.