Cisco, Microsoft bridge security gap
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Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Monday will announce a collaborative effort designed to bridge a divide between their emerging network access-control architectures.
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(InfoWorld) - Building a bridge is rarely a quiet affair. Just ask John Augustus Roebling and his son, Washington, whose Brooklyn Bridge took 13 years to complete and cost 27 people their lives. Nevertheless, for the past two years, IT titans Cisco and Microsoft have been engaged in a monumental and more-or-less silent bridge-building effort, as teams of engineers at both companies have worked to join two very different technologies that do the same thing: screen computers for security threats before allowing them to access a corporate network. Last Wednesday, the time had finally come to pull the covers off that integration, which one Cisco executive acknowledged took longer than expected. At The Security Standard conference in Boston, the two companies demonstrated interactions between Vista systems using Microsoftâs NAP (Network Access Protection) and network hardware using Ciscoâs NAC (Network Admission Control) architecture. They also released a white paper describing how the two network access control systems can interoperate and presented a road map for delivering interoperable NAC and NAP products to market. Still, serious questions remain about when interoperable NAC and NAP systems will be available and whether the solution will fit the needs of most enterprise networks. The announcement capped off a two-year integration effort that has been shrouded in mystery. Since saying in October 2004 that they would integrate NAC and NAP, the companies have been sparing with details, prompting speculation that the integration was more PR than reality. Bob Gleichauf, CTO of Ciscoâs security technology group, acknowledged that NAC-NAP integration took longer than the companies planned. However, the official silence about the integration project had more to do with the effort of harnessing resources at two notoriously bottom-line-focused companies than with the technical hurdles of integrating NAC and NAP, he said. Customers who use both Cisco and Microsoft products, and upgrade to both Vista on the desktop and Longhorn Server, will be able to use NAP, NAC, or an integrated NAP-NAC solution for client health screening, Microsoft said. Vistaâs NAP System Health Agent will send system health status reports to Microsoft NPS (Network Policy Server) running on Longhorn. A Cisco Secure ACS (Access Control Server) will instruct the NAP agent on the client system about how to access the network after the health check is complete, according to Gleichauf and Mark Ashida of Microsoft. However, Cisco and Microsoft face tough questioning about how their system will support third-party operating systems, network gear, and point security products. Ashida said Microsoft was focusing on NAC NAP for now but fully intends to support other 802.1x-compliant NAC infrastructure vendors. The benefits of integrated NAC and NAP are at least a year away for enterprises, with Longhorn server months away from availability and widespread adoption of Vista on enterprise desktops also well off in the future, said John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner. Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, said the Cisco-Microsoft partnership was creating uncertainty in an area that cries out for open standards and multivendor support. âTheyâre treating the symptom but not the disease,â Oltsik said. âUsers want open solutions that support Linux clients and wireless and any kind of switch or router.â The integration between Microsoft and Cisco, while good for those companies, will hinder open standards efforts such as the Trusted Computing Groupâs Trusted Network Connect standard, Oltsik said. âThis is a 1990s solution. Itâs a big step back for client security.â
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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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Their biggest clients hit hard by viruses, worms and other attacks, Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. said Monday that they plan to work together to help their corporate customers fight back.
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8/24/2004 -- Cisco Systems yesterday announced a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Communications Connector for Microsoftâs CRM offering.
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Cisco has warned in a security advisory that some networks with its routers could be vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks.
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BOSTON - Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc. warned customers about security holes in two products that provide user authentication and authorization services for network devices such as firewalls and routers.
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Cisco Systems and Microsoft are headed for a collision over network security, with customers caught in the middle. The two companies have each proposed competing &quot;end to end&quot; security architectures, marking
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco executives speaking at the ongoing Security Standard Conference claim that the networking giant hasn't sapped innovation in the security companies it has acquired in its efforts to add to its own expanse of IT systems-defense products, while some customers clearly feel otherwise. Taking the stage at the conference in Chicago on Monday to participate in a panel on Cisco's vision for warding off emerging threats and spam, the company's top security executives, and former IronPort Chief Executive Scott Weiss, defended the firm's growth-via-acquisition strategy. Cisco finalized its $830 million buyout of IronPort in June -- only the latest in a long string of such security acquisitions. The company has already begun blending the messaging and malware filtering gateway specialist's technologies into its firewalls, which the executives claim has created a new capability to provide customers with "wide packet inspection," an approach that adds reputation-based anti-attack capabilities to the systems' existing virus and spam detection abilities. Such integration work illustrates the fact that Cisco is improving the ability of its customers to defend their networks from attack and that the firm is serious about innovation and not just attempting to grow its revenues or boost sales of its networking gear by snapping-up other security vendors, Weiss told the assembled audience. Asked by a conference attendee whether major platform providers like Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM will continue to swallow smaller security companies, along with industry giants like Symantec, and how that will impact the availability of the cutting-edge technologies often developed by independent vendors, Weiss said that more consolidation is likely inevitable. Yet he also acknowledged that some niche players will continue to do well on their own. "All the [venture capital] firms that are into small security companies will likely make out like bandits, and there will be a scrum to get the good stuff," said Weiss, who is still heading up IronPort inside Cisco. "Bigger companies will have to decide whether to build, buy, or partner." Weiss highlighted Webroot, the anti-spyware software company that industry watchers have long tabbed for acquisition based on its specialized focus -- and which continues to defy those predictions and grow on its own -- as an example of the type of vendor that will be able to compete in a world where security is being driven further into other broadly-distributed IT platforms, such as Cisco's ubiquitous networking gear. "I think we'll continue to see new Webroots pop-up that can help deal with new threats," he said. "The issue for these companies is how broad is their platform and how to carve a significant portion of the infrastructure out; they have to ask themselves if their technology is broad enough to support a large, profitable company." Along with the benefits of melding together complimentary technologies, such as gateway filtering tools and firewalls, Weiss claims that customers are seeking integrated technologies from single vendors and increasingly looking for "one throat to choke" when selecting security tools. "Users of these technologies want products that talk to each other and have collaborative interfaces," he said. Customers worry about consolidation However, some existing Cisco customers claim that they are troubled by the continued pace of security industry consolidation. Even if Cisco can add many of the pieces that customers seek, it will likely not be able to provide technologies that are as innovative and effective as those made by independent vendors in some areas, said Waqas Akkawi, senior manager of IT security at Sirva, the moving giant that owns Allied Van Lines, Global Van Lines, and North American Van Lines, among other subsidiaries. Akkawi said that Cisco excels in some areas of security where it has experience, namely in network-based tools, but he noted that even some of those products, such as its IDS (intrusion detection systems) and IPS (intrusion prevention systems), also added via various acquisitions, don't measure up to those made by standalone providers. "Cisco is good at what they do naturally, as with firewalls, routers and switches, but they haven't done a good job on things like IPS and IDS where some other niche companies do a better job," said Akkawi. "In a lot of cases I think customers would be better off if these types of companies partnered instead of doing acquisitions or trying to build functionality into their existing products on their own. Sometimes a niche product that integrates well is going to be better than what these guys are talking about." Akkawi, who is a Cisco-certified IT pro, said that Sirva is constantly considering whether or not to go best-of-breed with independent vendors or buy into integrated security products like those being integrated by platform providers like Cisco's IronPort buyout. "These acquisitions will only work if a platform provider like Cisco can build the acquired technology into things they already do well. In some cases, these types of companies haven't been able to integrate everything they've bought, and we've seen some best-of-breed products go away," he said. "[Sirva] will likely continue to go fifty-fifty in terms of the integrated products we choose to buy, and the others we seek out to get true best-of-breed functionality." Many IT platform providers have moved aggressively in recent years to add security to their portfolios where it fits, as with EMC's buyout of authentication specialists RSA, along with IBM and HP's recent moves to add applications testing capabilities to their software development platforms via acquisition. The nature of the security industry is such that certain functions will be parceled into such widely-used technologies, while other newer tools will likely emerge from independents, said Mick Scully, vice president of product management at Cisco's Security Technology Group. Scully countered that despite any perception of cutting at innovation, Cisco is creating many new technology combinations that customers have responded well to, allowing its overall security business to crest $2 billion in revenues in the firm's fiscal 2006, representing a 25 percent annual growth rate in its overall security business. "There will always be a balance between best-of-breed and integrated security. The beauty of the market is that it is constantly changing at a rapid pace, and we will always see startups who address specific problems," Scully said. "But if you look at an acquisition like IronPort, we've left it almost entirely intact, run by the same team, even as we push its technologies into other products." Scully also highlighted the fact that Cisco has proven its chops as a security innovator, such as in creating the burgeoning market for NAC device authentication systems. He said that Cisco itself views its acquisitions as fifty-fifty propositions, looking for as many opportunities to continue to innovate the technologies its buys as it seeks opportunities to fold them into its other product lines. "It's an interesting dichotomy, I sort of see what these customers are saying, but we also believe that our standalone products, such as our NAC appliances, are already best-of-breed," Scully said. "As niche security markets become mature, merchant markets, we are going to look to get into those markets where we fit in; but we're also doing a lot of organic product development on our own, and we feel that we can offer best-of-breed capabilities in the security markets we compete in."
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Seattle, October 19: Microsoft Corp and Cisco Systems Inc on Monday said they would work more closely to make their products work more reliably with each other.
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Cisco Systems Inc. announced a broad set of security capabilities to bring wireless LAN networks into the same security compliance as wired networks, in a bid to help companies comply with federal regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
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IBM and Cisco Systems have unveiled product updates that will tie technology from the two companies more closely together in an effort to secure customer networks from worms and viruses.
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While America Online, Microsoft, and the open-source community agree to disagree about E-mail-authentication standards, some companies are stepping up to bridge the divide.
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In another move to address the increased threat and impact of worms and viruses to networked businesses, Cisco Systems, Inc. (www.
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Internet Explorer (IE) is no less secure than any other browser and does not lack any important features, according to Microsoft. But the managing director of Cisco admitted that he wouldnât use IE without additional protection.
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(InfoWorld) - Cisco Systems and Microsoft will announce progress on a 2-year-old effort to link their separate technologies for network client health screening, commonly known as "network access control," according to sources familiar with the companies' plans.Â  The companies will use The Security Standard conference in Boston to unveil application program interfaces (APIs) in Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system that will allow Cisco NAC-compliant switches and routers to evaluate the security posture of Vista systems. Network access control technology allows companies to perform health checks on endpoint devices such as PCs and mobile devices before they are granted access to company networks. For example, worker PCs might be checked to make sure they are not infected with a virus, have up-to-date antivirus definitions, and a desktop firewall enabled before being allowed onto a corporate LAN. Cisco first unveiled products that support its NAC architecture in June 2004. Since then it has slowly expanded NAC support from routers to switches and introduced a NAC appliance, formerly known as "Clean Access." Microsoft's Network Admission Protection (NAP) client health screening architecture has always been linked to its upcoming desktop and server operating system releases Vista and Longhorn, both due in 2007. In the face of strong customer pressure to simplify the competing architectures, the two companies said in October, 2004 that they would integrate NAC and NAP. However, the companies have been sparing with details of the collaboration during the two-year project, prompting speculation that the promised integration was more PR than reality. On Wednesday, the companies plan to show that they have made progress, putting features into Vista that allow companies with Cisco's Secure Access Control Server (ACS), Vista desktop systems, and a Longhorn network policy server to provide security status information from the Vista Security Center directly to Cisco switches, which can then evaluate the status against network policies. Systems that violate one or more security policies can be shunted off to quarantine for remediation, according to John Pescatore, an analyst at Gartner who has seen a demonstration of the system. The system will also allow companies to push out security updates, such as antivirus signatures, and actively monitor compliance, so users who turn off antivirus or firewall software after being granted access might have those programs automatically reactivated, Pescatore said. Cisco NAC and Microsoft NAP integration will make it easier for companies to deploy NAC technology, because they will not need to deploy any additional software client from Cisco, as is currently required, he said. "If you're a pure Cisco network and windows environment, and you're planning to go to Vista soon, you don't have to spend a lot of money," he said. However, the benefits of integrated NAC and NAP are at least a year away, as companies will have to wait for the delivery of Longhorn server and widespread adoption of Vista on enterprise desktops, according to Pescatore. "I think it's a 1990s announcement," said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "They're treating the symptom but not the disease. Users want open solutions that support Linux clients and wireless and any kind of switch or router," he said. The integration between Microsoft and Cisco, while good for those companies, will hinder open standards efforts like the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Network Connect (TNC) standard, Oltsik said. "I wish I had the money [Cisco and Microsoft] spent on this to get nothing," he said. "This is a big step back for client security."
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IBM Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. unveiled product updates that will tie technology from the two companies more closely together in an effort to secure customer networks from worms and viruses.