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Market Roundup April 6, 2007 IBM Move to Lower-Cost IPS an Inevitable Step for ROBO Security uXcomm To Acquire Virtugo Software |
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IBM Move to Lower-Cost IPS an Inevitable Step for ROBO Security
IBM has announced it will extend its Internet Security
Systems (ISS) intrusion prevention technology to remote segments of the network
by adding a new, lower-cost product to the IBM Proventia Network Intrusion
Prevention System (IPS) family. Through the addition of Proventia Network IPS
GX3002, IBM will offer comprehensive, ahead-of-the-threat protection for a new
layer of the enterprise network. The GX3002 is designed to protect a single
network segment at up to 10MBps of throughput, and its desktop form factor
features integrated zero-power bypass functionality to help ensure high network
availability. Proventia Network IPS GX3002 brings IBM's IPS protection to
remote segments of the network such as small branch offices and critical end
points, including ATMs, points-of-sale, and self-help kiosks, which are
increasingly becoming popular targets for Internet attacks. Until now,
companies needing to protect these points have had only limited-feature IPS
offerings available to them. This product provides the same robust security
features found in other Proventia Network IPS products, while still meeting the
lower cost requirements for remote segments.
It is not unusual for technology to evolve in a top-down
manner. Large sites mean larger orders so it’s only natural for vendors to
start at the top of the enterprise food chain and move down. However, security
practitioners and those charged with Governance, Compliance, and Risk
Mitigation have known for some time that the weakest link is often the Remote
Office or Branch Office (ROBO). These organizational outposts often have little
or no tech support, yet offer an inviting entry point for would-be attackers.
Consequently it makes a great deal of sense to offer the same kind of security
across an organization, regardless of the size of the location.
The announcement also includes some indications that IBM has
had the foresight to extend security into specialty devices. Many of these
devices such as kiosks, fuel pumps at gas stations, and others are powered by
variations of embedded operating systems. The ability to safeguard these
systems with their almost limitless variety in configurations requires a
significant investment in testing security products in specific environments.
Sageza believes this particular announcement demonstrates that IBM has done its homework in forging a strategy across the disparate elements of large organizations to include their outposts and specialty devices. In the future we would expect to see additional focused targeting from IBM. In particular we would expect to see a push into power, energy, water, sewerage, and oil/gas applications be expanding the technology used in the critical end points noted in the announcement to the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) devices found in these target verticals. It also appears to Sageza that IBM is one of the few organizations to actually take the U.S. Strategy to Secure Cyberspace seriously and we applaud these efforts.
uXcomm To Acquire Virtugo Software
uXcomm, a provider of monitoring,
control, and optimization software for virtual and physical servers, announced this
week that it has acquired the assets of Virtugo Software, a performance and
service-level management tools vendor for virtual environments. Under terms of
the agreement, uXcomm is purchasing all of Virtugo’s VirtualSuite product line,
including Perform and PerformLite, Capacity, Optimize, Meter, and Connect, as
well as the company’s tested software architecture. The company is assuming
responsibility for all sales and support contracts and has retained several key
members of the Virtugo staff. uXcomm provides
standards-based systems management solutions aimed at helping customers manage
disparate network devices from almost any management framework. The addition of
Virtugo’s VirtualSuite will extend the management scope so IT professionals
will be able to monitor and control 1,000s of virtual machines and hosts while
optimizing performance to meet SLAa and ensuring
sufficient capacity to maintain high availability. The company states that the
combination of uXcomm’s XManage
platform, which supports XenSource’s core
virtualization technologies, and Virtugo’s VirtualSuite, which supports VMWare, provides the first integrated management solution
for heterogeneous physical and virtual environments.
Consolidation and virtualization have been hot-button topics
for the past few years, and for good reason. There are plenty of opportunities
to optimize the efficiency of the data center and IT deployments in general. As
more powerful and cost-effective servers have come to market, the opportunity
to refresh aging equipment, reduce datacenter footprints, and raise overall
efficiency and simplicity has become a welcome arrow in the quiver of any IT
professional or CIO. However, with the acceptance of virtualization schemes,
there are new management issues raised that sometimes
may be trickier than managing one or two workloads on a physical server. Managing
multiple virtual machines, with various operating systems and distributed
application workloads, requires being able to assess the state of the physical
and virtual environment simultaneously within a single context.
Past and present virtualization schemes for the most part
have focused upon enabling virtualization, i.e., carving up a larger physical
server into smaller virtual servers to support workloads that in the past were
often mapped one per physical machine. This is a great first step in improving
efficiency as the number of machines, cables, and power consumption all
decrease and organizations can do more with less. However, there are other
capabilities that are just as important such as measurement, management, and
reporting. As time progresses and workload needs grow, the size of the virtual
machine deployed to support a workload can become insufficient. This is where
measurement management comes into play. To garner the next level of efficiency
gains requires being able to reallocate unused resources temporarily to other virtual
machines to order to meet peaks in workload without permanently allocating
resources that will go unused in non-peak scenarios.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this new technology
marriage is that uXcomm will be able to provide solutions that not only monitor
physical and virtual environments but will be able to do so from within a
single management framework. The ability to identify and loan resources
temporarily from virtual machines addresses some of the inflexibility of some
virtualization schemes in place. Further by supporting both Xen
and VMware platforms, the company is relevant to the
lion’s share of virtualized servers in the market today. By taking a holistic
view of resources, both physical and virtual, organizations would be in a better
position to optimize their infrastructure, and therefore raise
utilization/efficiency even further. From both an IT and corporate operations
perspective, this potential should be well received.
We have long articulated that the totality of virtualization will be realized when we think of all IT resources as simply being a function or capability available on the network when we request it. Where services physically reside is irrelevant from a functional perspective; the physical attributes only come into play when assessing SLA and choosing the appropriate resources to meet that need. We are heartened by the potential this marriage of uXcomm and Virtugo’s Virtual Suite offers to organizations that are serious about achieving the maximum efficiency and competitive advantage from their IT and datacenter investments.
Postini Positive Position Pushed by New Features
Postini has detailed major new innovations and enhancements
to its family of Software as a Service solutions.
Postini's solutions are designed to protect businesses worldwide from threats
to their electronic communications, enforce business policies, secure
intellectual property, assure privacy, and enable compliance with legal and
industry requirements for the retention and discovery of email and IM data.
Postini has enhanced its security offerings to protect clients from the
increasing threats to their electronic communications. New innovations include
adaptive heuristics, improved PTIN intelligence, and compressed file scanning.
Heuristics (behavior sensing and recognition capabilities) have been enhanced
with rapid filter updates and new algorithms that block emerging sophisticated
zero-hour spam, virus outbreaks, and image spam attacks. PTIN intelligence
refers to the Postini Threat Identification Network (PTIN), a realtime data
collection of malicious and infected IP addresses that propagate attacks across
the internet. PTIN data is based on the collective data observed by Postini
across the billions of connections processed daily across Postini's global data
centers. PTIN has been further enhanced to provide protection against
distributed bot-net attacks. Compressed file scanning helps facilitate
detection of malicious executables hidden inside compressed or archived
attachments. Combined with Postini's security architecture, which is designed
to ensure the most effective protection, these new innovations to Postini Email
Security strengthen the value delivered to Postini clients by maximizing catch
rates of unwanted communications and minimizing false positives.
Other innovations and enhancements to Postini Web Security
and Postini Web Compliance include pre-scanned search results, network effect
for URL scanning, mobile and remote user support, and intelligent Web
protection. The pre-scan innovation provides an “early warning system” for
search results from popular search engines including Google, Yahoo!
and MSN. The network effect for URL scanning ensures that threat data is
learned and shared across all users in order to improve security posture,
improve operational integrity, and reduce load on IT staff. This new
self-learning system continuously monitors Web activity and adapts to threats
in real-time. Mobile and remote user support ensures that access and usage
policies are enforced regardless of the location from which users access the Web
and protect the corporate systems. Intelligent Web protection filters out
portions of Web sites that contain malware or malicious links while providing
access to the safe parts of the site. The company also announced new archiving
features such as investigation management, email storage management with
personal archive access, and a new Postini toolbar. Other enhancements were
noted for encryption and the platform.
Sageza believes that these new features address a host of
issues. We have stressed that attackers will become more innovative and
targeted. This means that organizations will need to harness a variety of
intelligence sources to ensure they have a knowledge base sufficiently broad
enough to challenge conventional security planning. Attention to distributed
bot-net attacks is particularly important as this capability is not only
harmful in itself, but can be an ongoing attack vector
for other nefarious activities. It s also incumbent on organizations to share
intelligence and defensive actions across the organization as noted with the
URL scanning noted above. We are also strongly supportive of the notion that
access and usage policies must be enforced uniformly across an organization.
Postini’s new announcements offer quite a bit of food for thought. Sageza believes each of these is significant not only for individual characteristics but in the approach to the totality of the security and integrity challenge they represent in total. It’s also important to point out the inextricable link among information security, governance, compliance, and risk mitigation.
Power.org to Host Software Summit
Power.org has announced that it will host the first Power
Architecture Software Summit, a conference for software developers and
development managers to provide input and help refine Power.org’s software
strategy. The summit will focus on identifying solutions to challenges
associated with software development on Power Architecture. Discussions will
revolve around presentations that address a wide range of topics including
Power.org itself, PlayStation 3 as a development workstation, the business case for software on Power, and IDEs and Eclipse, among others. The summit will be held in
Austin, Texas, April 19 and will also be available through an Internet
conference.
Since Power.org was founded a little over two years ago, the
organization has grown and garnered the interest and participation of many of
those playing in the broad ecosystem that surrounds this unique architecture.
Much of the emphasis of Power.org has been to promote the hardware architecture
and get as many participants on board as possible. However, any hardware is
only as useful as the software that it drives. So, the Power Architecture
Software Summit is a logical exercise in bolstering interest in the platform.
Given the highly varied uses of the Power Architecture, Power.org is really the only venue in which a non-vendor-specific call for input and discussion would take place. Obviously, IBM’s software vision for Power differs from that of Freescale, Ericsson, or any of the dozens of other Power architecture-based solution providers. There is where the notion of collaborative innovation manifests itself, as many players with very different places in and approaches to the marketplace come together to promote development of intellectual property that benefits the greater community. Top-notch software and software development practices are essential for the growth of any platform and communities of developers offer a unique insight into the strength and challenges inherent in any platform. As such, we are pleased to see the Power.org cast a wide net in soliciting the feedback from its varied developer community, but also in its desire to enable development on the architecture in existing markets as well as helping seed development potential in new solutions as well.