Editor's Corner

Table of Contents

Bandwidth is a publication of Akibia Netowrk & Security Solutions

©2006 Akibia, Inc.
All rights reserved

Connectivity and messaging are mission critical to organizations and unfortunately spyware is using these as a one-two punch to penetrate and destabilize IT infrastructures. The scope and techniques used by malicious software has become alarming and threatens an organization's ability to provide a reliable, secure environment. On a daily basis, new tactics and details are released about the increasing sophistication of attacks. Clearly, higher levels of diligence are needed throughout an organization simply to maintain critical infrastructures.

For some organizations, security incidents have exposed their vulnerabilities. Part time workers, consultants, or traveling employees have been known to cause network outages and security incidents merely by connecting to the company's network. These incidents vividly reveal the need to improve the management and security around access, identity, policy and containment.

As the number of threats have increased, so too have the number of compliance initiatives - many of which may have interrupted IT security programs. Seasoned professionals that had prioritized projects to improve security and company operations, have found those priorities shuffled as they continually rush to meet deadlines for audits and regulations. Often in the rush to be compliant, it is difficult to address the larger issue of what is the best way to be secure. Timelines are compressed, decisions are accelerated, and ultimately the compliance requirement is met. But did it improve security?

Regulations attempt to provide guidance, protection and best practices. However, practitioners find that shuffling priorities due to external factors may conflict with plans for managing and deploying devices without threatening the integrity of their mission critical infrastructure. Ultimately, an IT organization's goal and metric for success is having an environment that is stable, available and can be managed proactively to avoid problems.

In the midst of these conflicts, Akibia sees opportunities to leverage technology that can help organizations improve security while also enhancing the end-user and IT professional's daily work routines. Access control, credentials management, endpoint security and patch management have become critical components in securing infrastructures and continued innovation has provided some very robust solutions.

In this issue of Bandwidth, we have compiled several articles on solutions and technologies that are helping our clients ensure the stability of their critical infrastructures and may help with your critical IT needs.

We invite your comments about the articles in this issue and suggestions on what you would like to read about in future editions. Please contact us at bandwidth@akibia.com.

FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE

Kenneth M. Smith, CISSP, Principal Security Engineer, Akibia
Kenneth Smith joined Akibia in 1996 and was responsible for developing Akibia's Vulnerability Assessment offerings. Mr. Smith is an expert in Information Security including testing, controls and countermeasures. He is the author of a variety of industry publications and holds a CISA, CISSP, QDSP and GCIH certification from SANS.

Richard Kagan, VP Marketing, Infoblox
Richard Kagan has over 24 years experience in the telecommunications, networking, and security industries. Mr. Kagan joined Infoblox from Fortinet where, as vice president of marketing, he built and led the team that defined and introduced a new category of integrated security appliances that represents the fastest growing segment of the network security market. Mr. Kagan has been published in numerous technical and business publications and is co-inventor on three patents in networking.

Sheila Doherty, Product Marketing Manager, RSA Security
Sheila Doherty has more than 10 years of product management experience in the high technology industry. Currently, she is responsible for defining and introducing innovative security products to the market with a focus on single sign-on technologies. Past speaking experience includes a number of worldwide customer conferences for enterprise software vendors.

Jim Hebert, CISSP, Security Engineer, Check Point Software Technologies
For the past ten years, Jim Hebert has focused on information security including Policy and Procedure development, network security architecture, VPNs, information security assessments and ethical hacking. He has a Master's Degree in Computer Information Systems and is Check Point CCSE certified.

Richard Weiss, CISSP, Director of Endpoint and Internal Security Product Marketing, Check Point Software Technologies
Richard Weiss is a computing and security industry veteran who speaks at conferences on topics ranging from network access control strategies to the requirements of internal network security. He also writes a quarterly column on security issues for Enterprise Systems Journal.

Dan Reiss, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Nokia
Dan Reiss has been with Nokia for over six years, during that time he has helped drive the direction for the extensive family of Nokia IP Security Solutions for both hardware and the IPSO operating system. Mr. Reiss also has over fifteen years in high tech marketing to the enterprise with extensive media and analysts presentations and quotes.