Proactively Protect Your Infrastructure with IBM Security Network IPS

Security threats are escalating...but security budgets are falling

Tivoli Beat - A weekly IBM service management perspective. Security managers today face many new challenges. And dealing with those challenges in an effective and cost-effective way is going to require smarter solutions.

Last-millennium, point-based solutions like firewalls are no longer enough. Today's more complex and sophisticated security threats, both internal and external, demand a more holistic and proactive response—one capable of addressing the complete infrastructure, from end to end, as well as threats both known and unknown. This is particularly true for new elements such as Web applications that support customer-desired services but can also create new attack vectors.

Another important point to consider is how the economic landscape has changed and how security has changed along with it. Faced with a cloudier business climate, many organizations are scaling back security as an IT domain, both in terms of head count and allocated budget.

And so, just as security threats are becoming more complex and their business consequences more daunting, there are fewer resources available to address them.

Firmware upgrade means IBM Security Network IPS is smarter, faster and more powerful

Fortunately, IBM Security offers an elegant answer to both problems.

IBM Security solutions can be combined to work in concert, handling the complete range of security threat while also leveraging smart design and simplified ease-of-use to minimize configuration and ongoing oversight. Thus, overall security climbs, but the cost of managing it falls.

Among IBM Security solutions, one that illustrates this value proposition very clearly is the IBM Security Network Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) supported by the latest firmware (version 4.1). IBM Security Network IPS is proactive by design, driven by high-performance hardware, and informed by the IBM X-Force® research and development team – one of the best-known commercial security research groups in the world. IBM Security Network IPS can detect and block malicious threats to an organization's network before impact to business operations.

And because policies can be created, edited, or new policies added very easily, the solution also delivers something much closer to holistic security than point solutions possibly could. Over time, as policies are tuned more and more closely to the organization's specific requirements, security becomes more and more effective—yet new investment in the form of headcount or IT solutions is not required. In fact, costs will fall because automation is increasingly leveraged. IBM Security Network IPS thus helps security managers fulfill their core goal of improving security despite the reduced available resources.

And thanks to the new firmware and newly updated appliances, the argument for IBM Security Network IPS is now stronger than ever.

Double IPS performance—Newly Released Appliances

Overall performance with our newly released version 2 appliances is more than double the performance of previous appliance models due to an improved motherboard for faster BUS speed, increased memory and a 64 bit processor. This translates directly into a faster analysis of infrastructural security. Improved performance also means additional capacity to run security convergence services like data security and web application security.

Secure both your data and your Web applications

With the modular extensible framework of the IBM Protocol Analysis Module – the protection engine inside IBM Security Network IPS – the IPS can adapt to address the latest threats which allow the IBM X-Force research and development team to add new areas of protection as needed.

The new 4.1 firmware delivers a wealth of enhancements designed to make IBM Security Network IPS even easier to use and expand the scope of its coverage to be even more comprehensive.

In fact, IBM Security Network IPS is now the only intrusion prevention system available on the market that’s capable of addressing both data security and Web application protection. Yet getting that protection doesn't require more security-specific expertise; it requires less.

For example, with the new 4.1 firmware we have tighter integration with IBM Rational® AppScan®. What AppScan does is mimic the intelligent security assessment of Web applications that an organization might normally need a dedicated security specialist to perform. By repeatedly testing a new application, using many different possible vectors of attack, AppScan can help the organization detect its security shortcomings in advance. Integration with IBM Security Network IPS allows customers using AppScan to build web application protection policies by using AppScan’s intelligence to proactively show what needs to be protected.

This means that if an organization has already made the investment in both AppScan and IBM Security Network IPS, those investments are both now delivering even more business value—all via a free firmware upgrade to the IPS appliance.

Organizations that have already made the investment in the IBM Security Network IPS GX or GV models, and have kept them up-to-date with earlier firmware upgrades, won't need to pay a penny. They can simply install the new 4.1 firmware and immediately begin enjoying the security and business benefits delivered with this latest firmware update.

Intuitive ease of use and improved granularity of control

The local management interface on the IBM Security Network IPS has also been significantly improved for simplicity and ease of use. Drop-down navigation and customizable dashboard windows make it faster than ever to track key metrics, then take action when that becomes necessary. And via new wizards, designed to help create or edit IPS policies, it's more straightforward than ever for security managers to ensure their infrastructures are protected as comprehensively as possible.

Those policies are now more granular, as well, in both Web application and data security contexts. For instance, Web application security policies can now easily be adjusted to handle multiple protection domains, such as client-side attacks or cross-site forgery attacks or buffer overflow attacks, just by checking the desired boxes. And within those protection domains, it's now a very straightforward matter to display, enable or block any targeted security events.

Similar improvements have been made to data security policies. These can now be created and enabled to correspond with specific user events, as well as look for personal identifiable information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers and so forth.

Collectively, all of these ease-of-use improvements help the organization lock down security better—more quickly, cost-effectively and automatically—in exactly the areas it needs the most.

Finally, the new 4.1 firmware also introduces support for IPv6—increasingly important as organizations worldwide move away from IPv4. IPv6, in fact, is already mandated at government agencies for security reasons. This means that vendors without IPv6 support can't continue to sell to their government customers—certainly not a business consequence they'd like to experience, and one that they can avoid by deploying IBM Security Network IPS.

Actually with the new 4.1 firmware, IBM Security Network IPS provides IPv6 administrative management of the appliance, displays IPv6 events and provides the ability to display the IPv6 source and destination IP addresses.

Additional features included with firmware 4.1 include right-click event blocking which allows for the immediate mitigation of a suspicious event. Also a geographic high availability option which can use the management port to share quarantine blocking decisions to ensure secure fail-over to a geographically remote IPS device.

As always the IBM Security Network IPS is backed by the world renowned IBM X-Force® Research and Development team. X-Force enables the IBM Security Network IPS to deliver preemptive protection, on average, 341 days Ahead of the Threat®.

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