The term “Virtual Blind Spot” has begun to fly around, but what does it mean? Basically, when you have resources and servers that are virtually moving between hardware boxes, the tried and true methods of monitoring traffic are unlikely to provide the required visibility for maintaining a secure and well-performing data center. After all, if I activate a SPAN to attach an IDS or an Application Monitor, great. But how the heck will I know whether the same traffic streams will be available to those tools over time?

Simple answer: I can’t.

What’s a security, operations, or application performance professional to do? It’s time to look at a different way of managing your monitoring assortment.

It’s time to adopt Monitoring Optimization.

Here are the switches, but where are the servers?

Physically-based monitoring has served us well over the years.  But times, they have already changed! For virtual environments, you need a very flexible, yet easy-to-use, monitoring solution. This is exactly what monitoring optimization provides.

In the past, you had to activate a SPAN (or place a Tap inline) to monitor key traffic streams. This was important, since the mirroring practice provided a safe place to monitor without introducing any latency or other risk into the live network segments on your network. The weakness with the old approach is that you can only have one tool for each SPAN or Tap. If you need more than two tools on a switch, tough luck. Go look for some point solutions to band-aid together, regardless of the management nightmare that would ensue. At least the data gets to the tools, right?

Wrong. Even in that scenario, the risks of dropped packets, misconfigured filters, and potential for human error during the “band-aid” process would be more than you may anticipate. Then something goes awry and you have to troubleshoot, and the problem becomes twice as complex. When you throw virtualization and moving resources into the mix, the whole model breaks.

Monitoring Optimization: Virtual Connections For Virtual Environments

Monitoring Optimization, the key technique that you get from the Anue 5200 Series Net Tool Optimizer, employs aggregation, replication, the most advanced filtering on the market, and the most intuitive interface to simplify this whole mess.

It is even more critical than ever to have visibility into all network segments where a virtualized resource may appear. Given the high cost of tools and limited number of available access points, it is impractical to think you can simply buy tools for every candidate network segment for whatever it is you need to monitor (not to mention the management overload you’d personally suffer through if you did choose to go that route).

Monitoring Optimization allows you to simply SPAN or Tap each segment a single time, route it to the Net Tool Optimizer, and leave all important tools attached to the box as well. Then you do all the connections and filtering “virtually”, i.e. right in the product’s fully-integrated GUI.

Simply drag and drop the segments to the tools that need to see the traffic, configure the filters in a matter of minutes using a simple Windows-like interface, and start monitoring. Heck, you could route all network segments to every tool if you like. Just filter down the data appropriately to keep the tools from overloading, and move on with your day.

If something goes wrong and you need to troubleshoot, no problem! Drag across a “virtual” connection from the segment(s) requiring diagnosis, set up the filter, and your diagnostic tool is off to the races. Notice that there’s no need to actually plug and unplug tools, because your connections are all virtual, just like your network! How’s that for minimizing MTTR?

All Virtualized Data Centers Should Have Monitoring Optimization

Yes, when I wrote it I meant it. Every. Single. Virtualized. Data. Center.

We are all squeezed for time. Why spend all day playing around with point solutions or plugging and unplugging tools to get this figured out? Just optimize it and move on! You also get the added benefits of monitoring more of the network without buying more tools, full integration to existing systems (SNMP, TACACS+, etc.), complete control to access based on groups, and a variety of other key features we included specifically to make your job easier.

Want to learn more? We are offering a $50 promotion for 30 minutes of your time to view a demo (for qualified respondents as indicated on the signup page). If virtualization is important to your business, you owe it to yourself to learn about the best monitoring optimization solution on the market.

The survey, which was conducted by Network Instruments the past two years (NetQoS and NI conducted it together in 2008), revealed some very interesting data points.

1. Virtualization, as we would have anticipated, has picked up a great deal of momentum both in the data center and on the desktop.
2. The primary reason for adopting virtualization is cost savings. Yet, they also revealed that implementation costs are too high.
3. The single biggest virtualization-related challenge is a lack of visibility to data streams, an inability to secure the infrastructure, and a lack of monitoring tools optimized for virtualized environments.

Based on the interplay of the first two key findings above, it is clear that high implementation cost is not a long-term problem. Obviously, today’s decision makers can see the “forest for the trees” so to say, in that the expected long-term cost savings will easily dwarf the high cost of entry.

What jumps out to me the most is the monitoring problem. This is not a unique challenge to virtualized environments, but rather, virtualization itself is causing some head-scratching regarding the monitoring itself. And really, for data centers that are already burdened with escalating tool costs, shrinking staffs, and a shortage of physical access points, it’s no wonder some of them might feel desperate to fix the monitoring quandary.

The reality of the situation is that there is a very easy answer to this problem: Monitoring Optimization. Monitoring optimization involves the adoption of an aggregation and replication switch, which can solve all of these problems if designed with a fully-integrated GUI. The key is to look at this as the monitoring of specific data flows or traffic, not specific links, switches, or access points.

With servers and other hardware switching over to “virtual” servers and hardware, one of the biggest issues is knowing where to place tools in the physical infrastructure. If you stick with the “old way” of placing a tool everywhere monitoring is required, you’ll need more tools than any reasonable enterprise can afford to buy or manage!

What you really need is a “virtual tool farm” to go with your virtual infrastructure. Don’t get me wrong; you’ll still be using the same hardware/software-based tools you have already deployed. But using Monitoring Optimization, you can extend a single tool to cover multiple data streams, and you can share traffic from a single data stream with any or all of the tools you desire. The best part is that you can do it all in a fully integrated GUI without ever having to use  some time-intensive, cryptic IOS-like CLI (likely in a proprietary coding language from the vendor, as most of our competitors offer) to manage your most challenging filtering…it’s all drag and drop and windows-esque form entry.

If you count yourself among those who said monitoring is their biggest headache, I urge you to learn more about the Anue 5200 Series Net Tool Optimizer. Then reach out to us via our Contact Me form, and we’ll show you exactly how much easier this can be, and you will see a positive impact to your tool use and staff effort immediately upon deploying our solution.

______________

________________

This week’s guest post comes to you from Steve Bulmer, CTO of Consonus.  Consonus has a core competency in virtualized solutions, and that’s exactly the topic he is covering off for you today.

______________

Virtualization is the latest technology to revolutionize IT, data centers, and nearly all computing operations. The wide range of virtualization solutions has created new opportunities for efficient information technology operations that any company can access and afford. When it comes to data center virtualization, there are many services and procedures available to streamline any or all parts of data center management.

Nearly any IT component or procedure can be made virtual. Data storage itself can be optimized with virtual drive utilization. Networks can be set up and managed with virtual partitions and connections to streamline communications and wiring. Applications and software can be distributed from a central server to end user terminals. Even hardware can be made virtual by parceling out centralized processing power on demand. Operating systems themselves can be made virtual, turning access terminals into full-fledged computers.

Virtualization and Data Storage

Optimizing data storage with virtualization solutions breaks down into two main methods. First, block virtualization enables distributed storage networks to appear to be a single physical device. Data center virtualization, in this respect, would consist of information that is mapped to remote drives instead of local hard drives. This scheme creates individual, virtual hard drives for each user that are all located on a network drive but appear to, and function as, a typical hard drive. Data is then connected with a central source instead of disparate local drives, increasing data storage efficiency without sacrificing accessibility.

File virtualization solutions are geared towards providing flexibility for both users and networks. Typically, workers manipulate files directly, navigating to a specific drive in order to open, move, or rename files. Making this process virtual occurs by having users access a pointer to necessary files. This results in the same functionality as before, but offers the ability to manage the files on a drive, move them, perform maintenance on the drive, or migrate to a new system and only have to update a global pointer. These changes can occur behind the scene without the need for each user to update their drive mappings.

Flexible Virtual Networks

Wiring data center networks that are capable of handling new users easily while being reliable can be achieved through network virtualization. Each network can be separated into individual smaller networks, enabling a single Ethernet port to handle multiple virtual connections. These connections can be more easily managed in order to service hardware and shift loads when a network device fails. This dynamic and robust setup helps to ensure stable data center networks.

Virtual Software and Applications

A large portion of virtualization solutions’ cost savings can come from using virtual software. A central server hosts all the necessary software and applications and then distributes them to terminals as they are needed. Each user’s terminal provides the processing power and memory, but the installed files remain on the host computer. In doing so, costly, redundant application installations can be avoided, and scaling up the number of terminals that need to run a given application becomes turnkey.

Making Hardware Virtual

On the other hand, virtualization solutions can take the form of virtual hardware as well. Instead of having each terminal as a fully-fledged computer, complete with processor and memory, terminals can consist of a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The required processor power is assigned from an efficient, high power computer or server on an as-needed basis. Every data center operation would be dynamically allocated CPU power, ensuring that computing resources are used efficiently without waste.

Operating Systems

Combining hardware, software, and operating system virtualization can create comprehensive virtualization solutions. Data center access terminals, instead of being a complete computer, could instead be a set of input devices with all the required components being distributed from a central, high efficiency central server. Each terminal would only use the resources it needed without having to have dedicated hardware and software, which is often redundant.

Operating system virtualization follows the same idea as remote application hosting. Instead of providing a suite of software, the operating system itself is made available to an end user. Each operating system is a self-contained version of common OS’s.

Ultimately, full virtualization services can radically transform data centers. Be removing hardware requirements and the associated capital investment and lead time, entire systems can be dynamically scaled to meet specific needs. IT implementations can be leveraged for efficient operation without wasting resources. Overall, data center virtualization solutions make cost efficient, cutting edge technology more readily available to businesses of all sizes in any industry.

______________

The following commentary is based on IDC’s top 10 tech predictions: cloud and analytics, which just recently appeared on NetworkWorld.com.

The Maturing of Cloud: SLA Implications on Service Providers will Improve and Emerge
We’ve commented and covered criticisms regarding cloud security quite a bit on The Network View, and there has been a great deal of debate about this topic. Performance is another crucial piece to this puzzle. For enterprises to truly take the cloud seriously, we need to get performance and uptime to reasonable SLA levels, we need to determine the best and least “crackable” method by which to encrypt traffic that moves into and back out of the cloud, and business continuity / disaster recovery practices must be much more buttoned-down. Sure, I think it will only be a matter of time before we get there, but I remain skeptical that we will take this major step within the next 12 months. If you are privy to some data that will change my mind, I’d love to read about it in the comments.

The Tipping Point: The Inevitable Adoption of Social Media in Enterprises
I, personally, love this prediction and truly hope it will come to pass. The open issue is exactly what “adoption of social media in the enterprise” means. In all likelihood, it will not be a full tolerance and acceptance across the organization due to security concerns, particularly in the most conservative and old school of the corporations. What I envision in the near term is that corporate communications teams will be authorized to spread only approved messages and topics, much like PR is currently managed, only in real-time. In reality, it will take another year or two before we can reach critical mass of knowledge among enterprises regarding the best ways to enforce security measures, monitoring behaviors, and incorporate such traffic-heavy activities into the day-to-day management and optimization of network performance. In the meantime, here’s to your company not blocking Twitter, blogs, or other social media until they can get it figured out.

Converged Fabric and the Evolving Data Center
Data Centers have already been evolving, there’s no question about it. Now, with a massive shift toward reducing footprint and power consumption, consolidating equipment and applications, and generally making the most of reduced budgets, network operations and architecture teams are forced to look at new ways of managing the network – and all of this is happening as we are smack dab in the middle of a migration to faster 10GbE architectures in many companies.

Virtualization technologies deployed across FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet) will provide outstanding abilities to dynamically manage bandwidth and server cycles. The cost savings and productivity improvements in the long term are obvious, but we need to be absolutely positive that complementary training and skillset growth are taken into account to ensure full enjoyment of the expected benefits.

The Dawn of the Enterprise Appliance
I’m not so sure the word “dawn” is the right analogy, as we already have quite a few different single-purpose hardware-driven solutions for monitoring and other activities. The key here, in my mind anyway, is how this plays with virtualization technologies. Since we can virtually manage bandwidth and storage already, and virtual machines can dynamically relocate based on server load, I’m a bit dubious that this actually makes sense in the long run (vs. implementing these single-purpose activities virtually). That said, aggregation and distribution technologies like Monitoring Optimization solutions will be even more important in a virtualized environment, particularly one where appliances become commonplace.

Okay, that’s it for me and my soapbox today. Hit me with your thoughts, criticisms, embellishments, or questions. And as always, thanks for your time and attention.

Data Centers: The next five years

Last week at the annual Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, key analysts overviewed the most important issues that data centers face in the next five years. As expected, rising energy costs and the movement toward “green” solutions was a primary topic, as was social networking technology. But there were several other hot topics which the responsible network operations professional should be pursuing.

Below is our take on eight of the top 10 issues, as raised by Gartner. As a refresher, the top 10 issues were virtualization; the data deluge; energy and green IT; complex resource tracking; consumerization of IT and social software; unified communications; mobile and wireless; system density; mashups and portals; and cloud computing.

1. Virtualization – As virtualization technologies continue to advance, adoption is accelerating. Savvy data centers have already begun implementing virtualized servers, and this growing trend is here to stay for a variety of reasons including dynamic server load management, a need to reduce power consumption, and fast growing network complexity.
2. The data deluge – Not a new issue, albeit an accelerating one, the vast amount of data that traverses today’s networks creates a variety of problems, from storage management to throughput to monitoring. And here’s the kicker…the problem will only continue to expand over time. Faster and more efficient network infrastructures (10G today, 40G and later 100G in the future) will help with throughput. Gartner’s automated tiering idea for storage holds water strategically, but not all data centers are poised to implement it in the near term. Monitoring is particularly concerning, as higher bandwidth tools are required, yet virtualized servers and applications can be a challenge to pinpoint for monitoring in dynamic environments. Advanced capabilities for data/traffic aggregation and filtering are not only “nice to have” in virtualized environments, but a must.
3. Energy and green IT – Not much to say that you haven’t already heard. When it comes right down to brass tacks, this is a cost saving move, and fortunately (for your corporate communications division), it can be leveraged for some positive PR. Given current global issues related to energy costs and environmental concerns, this trend is here to stay.
4. Consumerization of IT and social software – This is an issue that has grown significantly over the past year or two, and one that Gartner has said will continue this accelerated growth path over the next several years. Consumers are very interested in new technologies, and especially in the ability to control their own user experience. Coupled with a growing trend toward a distributed workforce, work-from-home privileges, and the vast volume of unstructured data that result from social web-based applications, we see consumerization as inevitable (and in some respects, a good thing).
5. Unified communications - UC has been touted as the grand vision for bringing all communications media together, and it most certainly has its benefits, idealistically. That said, the growing trend toward digitization of communications is a prerequisite to truly achieving this vision. Kudos to Cisco and other thought leaders in this area, because as we analyzed in our post about the Net Generation, real-time and cross-platform (even cross media) integration is exactly the type of capabilities the younger sect of the population desires.
6. 

   Mobile devices like the Android now function like mini-computers

   Mobile and wireless – Continuing on the idea that the younger generation wants pervasive connectivity and interaction, mobile and wireless are growing in importance by the day. This is yet another way that social technologies are forcing our hand at considering new strategies for accommodating user needs. Coupled with the desire for “real time everything”, we have seen mobile phones advance to the point where they can serve as mini computers. The key issues then are how to secure devices that are not physically attached to the network itself, how to accelerate performance over time as mobile network speed increases, and how to properly provision devices and connections.  Brace yourselves, because the complexities that this will pose may not even all be known as of today.

7. Mashups and portals – Both similar in nature, in that they serve important content aggregation purposes, mashups and portals offer different challenges due to the nature of how they work. Of particular concern to us is the mashup concept, where not only content but code can be aggregated. The obvious problem is that you risk exposing yourself to untrusted code, not to mention potential copyright issues related to syndicating content that is not authorized for distribution and/or republication. Since browsers were not designed with mashups in mind, this is an issue that absolutely cannot be overlooked from a security standpoint.
8. Cloud computing – With all of the cost and efficiency benefits that cloud computing offers, cloud security remains a wild card. Two of the most common arguments about cloud security center around the access / authorization process and storage / transmission of sensitive data. Access can be a problem for anything that falls outside of your physical environment, but that is a lesser concern in our eyes than securing the actual traffic stream that transmits across the ultimate cloud…the Internet. It will be fun to watch how this all plays out in the coming months and years.

So there you have it, our take on eight of the 10 issues that Gartner said will be the most important to data centers heading into the second decade of this century.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the issues and our commentary. Feel free to agree or disagree. Debates can be very useful in helping hone our viewpoints on all of these issues, so I truly hope this post sparked a new idea or thought for you.

ALIST: Bill Roth of Log Logic

Name: Bill Roth
Title/Role: EVP / Chief Marketing Officer
Company: LogLogic
Product Focus: Security, Log Management, Compliance
Twitter Handle: @loglogic

1. What is your company’s flagship product, and why is it important for security purposes?
Our flagship product is our Open Log Management Platform, which collects, normalizes, indexes, stores, and searches log data automatically with our easy-to-deploy appliances or hosted solutions. This provides a platform for collecting system information from a wide array of products and devices, especially those related to security. Our security products, on top of the platform, allow system admins and IT security staff to analyze and correlate diverse log data in real-time for identification and management of security events.

2. What areas of security are most important to you professionally, and which do you enjoy working with most?
Security event management. The only true way to detect a security breach is by tracking what actually happens in real time. In addition, it is crucial to be able to understand the security profile across many different devices, systems, and environments, and to be able to correlate those events to detect sophisticated security threats. Personally, I enjoy working on the areas of security which most closely align with public policy, especially in areas like HIPAA and HITECH.

3. What is the most common security challenge you are brought in on to help fix on behalf of customers?
Vsibility of security events in an environment. Most customers we encounter are unaware of the scale of security information they have or do not know the scope of the security issues they have occurring right in front of them. Many companies are stunned to learn the amount of simple, out-of-policy activities that are going undetected in their organizations, such as illegal P2P file sharing or employee-driven data-leakage.

4. How do you see Cloud Computing, virtualization, and Social Media affecting security in the coming months?
These are three very different topics, each with a different set of security issues surrounding them.

Cloud computing security will be the most vexing issue in the foreseeable future for two reasons. First, it will be vexing because the subject is so ill-defined. Second, because the fundamental essence of cloud computing is to trust your computing assets to “the network.” As soon as you begin to broadcast any of your bits to the internet, your security exposure goes up by several orders of magnitude. Much more attention will need to be paid to secure cloud computing in the future.

The juxtaposition of virtualization and security results in no new security issues, just more of the security issues we already know about. Virtualization is, at its core, about making the hardware boundaries more flexible so that you can run more “images” on the same amount of hardware. This means a proliferation of events to watch and an explosion of correlations to watch for.

Of the three topics mentioned, social media is the likeliest to be transformative. Social media is essentially a means of exposing fine-grained information about oneself, one’s assets, or one’s behavior. This implies a more fine-grained analysis of who has been granted what data, and in what context. The implication of this is that fine-grained authentication and authorization will be more important than ever.

5. Tell me what your most pressing security concern is over the next 1-2 years.
Providing people with the ability to comply with the suite of security and privacy laws around the world. With the major portions of the HITECH act coming into force this year in the US, and with federal penalties of up to $1.5M, my most pressing concern is being able to provide products to protect our customers. I have the same concerns for EU legal regimes.

6. How do you stay abreast of the latest market developments in your space? Shows, social media, RSS, etc.
Oddly enough, RSS via FireFox’s Live Bookmarks feature allows me to quickly scan the day’s news and to get up to date quickly on what is happening around the world. Using this feature, I can quickly scan 5 major newspapers (San Jose Mercury News, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today) and 10-15 trade publications. I am a huge fan of CMO.com, from Adobe’s Omniture unit. To be honest, I do not get much information from Social Media. But that is another story for another time.

7. In closing, give us one idea you have about security that everyone should consider. Your “Golden Egg”, so to say.
While systems security is vitally important, security is not just about security products. It is about people, process, and products.

Several recent studies have shown that the greatest sources of security breaches are not from hackers or terrorists, but from people inside your organization. A holistic approach to security involves good systems monitoring, to be certain, but also involves making sure the right processes and people are in place as well.

_________________________________________________

Thank you for playing Bill!

For those of you who want to learn more about the people and process part of this equation, please view one of our archived Security Policy Webinars, courtesy of Erin Jacobs and Anue Systems. We also recommend you sign up for the next three so you can earn your certification in Security Monitoring Optimization!

ALIST: Johnnie Konstantas of Altor Networks

After our one-week hiatus from the ALIST series, we turn our attention back here to profile a key executive at Altor Networks. Johnnie Konstantas has a long track record of technical and marketing leadership success at leading companies such as Juniper Networks, CheckPoint, and most recently, Varonis Systems. Now, she leads the charge to market Altor Networks’ virtualization security products. Let’s get right to the interview…

Name: Johnnie Konstantas
Title/Role: Vice President of Marketing
Company: Altor Networks
Product Focus: Security for virtual data centers and clouds
Twitter Handle: @altornetworks

1. What is your company’s flagship product, and why is it important for security purposes?
Altor Networks’ flagship product is Altor VF – an industry first purpose-built firewall that offers comprehensive security of virtualized networks and the hypervisor. Now in it’s third major release, the Altor solution protects virtualized servers and the platform they run on from unwarranted access and malware without impacting throughput or virtualization’s scalability (i.e. vMotion, DRS).

2. What areas of security are most important to you professionally, and which do you enjoy working with most?
Virtual network and cloud security impact me most at the moment, since it’s my current charter to educate the market on the risks and mitigation strategies. After [having spent] 16 years in the market, there are a lot of areas which fascinate me, although I have to admit that, in this place I find myself now,  there is extreme gratification in seeding and educating a market on what you know to be imminent risks. You feel a little like Steve Carrell playing Noah in Evan Almighty, trying to convince the townspeople to come to the boat.

Evangelism: Explaining Virtualization Strategy Akin to Noah's Quandary

3. What is the most common security challenge you are brought in on to help fix on behalf of customers?
Restoring the virtual environment to a compliant or compliance-acceptable security posture is the biggest driver to Altor deployment at the moment. People virtualize their servers and then someone asks “How are we going to demonstrate access control enforcement and separation of duties?”

4. How do you see Cloud Computing, virtualization, and Social Media affecting security in the coming months?
Enterprises of all sizes are shifting their workloads to virtualized platforms in droves. When they do, the questions start flowing: How do I demonstrate compliance? How do I segment my resources? How do I control VM sprawl and mitigate security risks? There are available products and approaches, but the degree to which they preserve virtualization’s savings vary, so I suspect there will be a rush to educate and implement. To the extent that clouds may use virtualization as their platform, the net effect is the same. How do I protect my business and my customer’s assets?

[Companies need] corporate guidelines in play regarding what can be shared outside the firm via social media outlets, which largely requires that  people know the right thing to do. That effort is largely a focus on  building and “socializing” (pardon the pun) proper use policies.

5. Tell me what your most pressing security concern is over the next 1-2 years.
I worry that, in a rush to build green, efficient, data centers, well-intended folks who are short handed and following corporate mandates may shortchange security in the architecting of these new networks. I worry that my personal information maybe more at risk in the next two years than it is today.

6. How do you stay abreast of the latest market developments in your space? Shows, social media, RSS, etc.
All of the above. It is imperative to leverage the “groups” features of the various social media outlets so that you not only get the latest breaking stories, but for me as a marketeer, I need to understand what the prevalent attitudes are about a company, a market, a trend, etc.

7. In closing, give us one idea you have about security that everyone should consider. Your “Golden Egg”, so to say.
Assuming that you are using some sort of cloud service (and chances are good you are, i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, Salesforce), make sure you know what protects your piece of the cloud from someone else’s? What one measure, policy, or guarantee can the provider make to you?

ALIST: Rick Basile of Fortinet

Welcome to the third installment of our ALIST series. Today we offer you Rick Basile, the Senior Director of Technical Services for Fortinet.  We want to thank our friend Jennifer Leggio (@mediaphyter), Strategic Communications Director at Fortinet and Social Business blogger for ZDnet, for helping us arrange this interview with Rick.

Name: Rick Basile
Title/Role: Senior Director, Technical Services
Company: Fortinet
Product Focus: Entire security product portfolio
Twitter Handle: @fortinet

1. What is your company’s flagship product, and why is it important for security purposes?
Our flagship product is our FortiGate security appliance line, a hardware platform allowing enterprise companies to deploy multiple security applications, i.e. IPS, firewall, VPN, antivirus, and so on, in a more manageable security solution. Our consolidated security approach allows for a more secure, cost-effective, and easy-to-manage solution for our customers.

2. What areas of security are most important to you professionally, and which do you enjoy working with most?
Network perimeter based security; [which is] the ability to help corporations control access into their infrastructures, as well as controlling what intellectual assets and behaviors are allowed out of their infrastructures. This can be done with our FortiGate product line as a multifaceted security appliance, or our FortiMail secure messaging product, which allows for the mitigation of inbound SPAM and threats and also intelligent encryption of sensitive data leaving the infrastructure.

3. What is the most common security challenge you are brought in on to help fix on behalf of customers?
The most common security challenge for customers is looking for an enterprise-wide posture and policy. It’s my job to help them secure their infrastructures against internal and external threats. While our product set is all about the ability to consolidate, it does not minimize the need for a layered security policy. We help our customers determine where those layers need to be in the infrastructure.

4. How do you see Cloud Computing, virtualization, and Social Media affecting security in the coming months?
As more enterprises investigate leveraging cloud computing environments to store and manipulate their data, they have to be confident that these providers are ensuring the segregation and security of their data and resources from unwarranted access.  Beyond these basic concerns in choosing a cloud computing environment, I also have concerns around the ability of an enterprise to have confidence in their continued control of their intellectual property.  As an example, should an enterprise choose to leave one cloud computing vendor for another, how would they know that their data truly leaves with them?  What mechanisms are being put in place to guarantee the revocation of that data from a vendor’s cloud?

On the social media side, these social networks don’t just offer a security risk from malware exploits or unwanted access, they present risks on authenticity of information as well. Information mishandling is another concern against which companies need to protect.  As these social media outlets grow, it is becoming increasingly challenging to ensure that users are going to the authoritative owners of the data for their information.

5. Tell me what your most pressing security concern is over the next 1-2 years.
My most pressing concern is around people focusing more on being compliant than on being secure. Compliance is what drives a lot of buying cycles, but being secure should be first and foremost when they look at what they are going to deploy and how they are going to deploy it. Compliance is clearly important, but you have to make sure you are secure as well.

6. How do you stay abreast of the latest market developments in your space? Shows, social media, RSS, etc.
I spend a lot of time researching and working with our own research analysts and product and development teams. Most of what I do to stay abreast is working directly with customers in pre- and post-sales situations. I also get to spend a lot of time with analysts in the space, learning what they are hearing from their customers.

7. In closing, give us one idea you have about security that everyone should consider. Your “Golden Egg”, so to say.
When considering a security solution, ask yourself, “What are the assets you are trying to protect? What are you trying to accomplish?” Don’t get lost in trying to purchase a solution on name alone. Even though I work for a vendor, it’s my job to best position our product line to actually address customer needs. Determine your requirements and your needs, and work with the vendor that best matches your requirements.