Technology giants have joined forces with security providers to train resources, as well as build and deploy solutions that find and eliminate network vulnerabilities.
“It’s often said that the best defense is a good offense,” said Eric Hanselman, Chief Analyst, 451 Research. “However, in IT security, companies frequently focus on defense rather than offense leaving their enterprises vulnerable and increasing costs for recovery after a breach. A holistic approach to enterprise security lifecycle from development to deployment through operation helps protect an enterprise effectively.”
A comprehensive security strategy requires organizations to look at network vulnerabilities from an offensive and defensive position. Offense involves finding vulnerabilities—whether they exist in products, in software, operating systems, people, or processes—and eliminating them before they can be exploited. But threats against a business critical network can appear from any direction, requiring reliable network defense to safeguard against attackers.
“Ixia understands that to win the cyber-war we must arm organizations with the tools that not only defend against attack, but proactively protect their networks and applications,” stated Scott Westlake, Vice President of Business Development for Ixia. “Finding a breach quickly, and addressing it after the fact is good, but not as good as stopping it in the first place. Our security partners are experts in what they do, but they aren’t as effective when incomplete data is being fed to them. Optimal security posture requires the best products, training, and architectures.”
Ixia is working with the industry’s leading technology providers to deliver the first full lifecycle security platform against cybercrime, by ensuring that organizations have access to solutions that defend against advanced threats and provide network resiliency. These partners include Cisco, FireEye, Fortinet, HPE Security, Imperva, Intel Security, LogRhythm, Radware, Savvius and Vectra, to name a few.
Security testing and training
Ixia’s security partners leverage the company’s BreakingPoint Solution (BPS) in their development labs to test the performance limits and security effectiveness of their next generation appliances and software capabilities.
“Our customers rely on our end-to-end security fabric to protect against the most advanced threats around the world. From the cloud to the edge, to the end point, we need to be absolutely certain that our appliances operate at the highest levels of quality, reliability and effectiveness. Ixia’s BreakingPoint solution allows us to achieve this for our next generation firewalls” said Chad Whalen, Vice President of Global Strategic Alliances and Cloud at Fortinet.
In addition, Ixia’s BreakingPoint enables technology partners to model and replicate advanced cyber threats to harden their security offerings, and help transform their personnel into training cyber warriors using advanced curriculum and real-world exercises. For a powerful yet portable form factor, Ixia’s PerfectStorm ONE appliances scale from 4Gbps to 80Gbps of application traffic.
“Ixia’s PerfectStorm ONE brings great value to our cyber range as it allows us to train personnel on how to defend critical infrastructure assets and launch attacks against simulated critical infrastructure targets,” said Henry Capello of LSU. “This experience empowers our personnel with the knowledge and preparedness to handle real live scenarios when they occur.”
Providing intelligent data feeds to security tools
Threats carefully hidden in encrypted traffic can easily bypass security controls. Ixia’s Vision ONE enables organizations to maintain security across physical and virtual infrastructures from a single security platform.
“As the use of virtualization in the data center and SSL encryption continues to grow, organizations around the globe struggle to gain visibility into network activity to protect their vital business assets. Ixia’s Vision ONE addresses this challenge with an all-in-one, enterprise-class platform that integrates highly scalable network access, advanced policy management and full SSL decryption,” said Matt Winter, Vice President of Business Development from LogRhythm.
“This unique set of capabilities ensures LogRhythm’s network monitoring and forensics solutions have access and visibility into an organization’s network traffic, including encrypted traffic and traffic traversing virtual environments. Receiving and analyzing 100 percent of the traffic from Ixia under all workloads, enables LogRhythm to rapidly detect, respond to, and neutralize cyber threats before they can cause damage.”