Re: State of security technology for the enterprise

In thinking about it I guess the reluctance is based more on management
being concerned that if I architect an open source solution and leave, there
will be a smaller pool of people to choose from to support it going forward.
Because I am a staff of one for security, there is also the fear that if I
am out and someone needs to "take a look" or respond to a problem, there is
no easy support to call.  In these lean times they refuse to hire extra
personnel.  Anyhow, I am willing to consider open source solutions where
they fit.

 

Good info on DPI, thanks.  This is the kind of information I'm looking for.
I am not currently using a proxy and had planned on buying BlueCoat last
year for use both as a proxy and decryption/re-encryption of SSL for
inspection.  Then I was forced to spend the $$ on a new SAN.  This is one
piece I wanted in place this year.

 

 

----------------------------------------------

Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:06:52 -0400 (EDT)

From: "Paul D. Robertson" <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: [fw-wiz] State of security technology for the enterprise

To: Firewall Wizards Security Mailing List

      <[email protected]>

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

Content-Type: TEXT/Plain; charset=US-ASCII

 

On Thu, 30 Apr 2009, Chris Hughes wrote:

 

> "mainstream" as missing the mark.  The problem is, on an enterprise 

> level, most companies are not willing to look at open source solutions 

> or vendors they have never heard of.  They want brand names that can 

> be supported by a wide audience of engineers.

 

I've never seen that level of reluctance at any large enterprise I've worked
or consulted for.  In fact, in these economic times, "it's free" is a lot
more palatable than "you need to spend $10,000."  I'd gently suggest that
the security "sale" for the requirement isn't being done well enough if you
can't choose best of breed open source tools- especially if the argument is
"wide audeience of engineers."  If your "wide audience" is that narrowly
focused, then I'd suggest removing the term "engineer" from their titles and
substituting "monkeys!"

 

> My purpose was not to offend you or become viewed as ignorant.  My 

> purpose is to solicit opinions on these technologies which appear to 

> me and the folks I deal with as "new".  I will look at IBM's offering as
you suggest.

 

"Deep packet inspection" has been on the market as such for a number of
years as the challengers to "stateful packet inspection" looked for their
own marketing term.  The "problem" with DPI is that to do it right, you
basically have to mimic the fragmentation, ordering and reassembly of an IP
stack, then know what to look for as "bad"- by the time you've written all
of that, you may as well have written a real proxy where you know the
effects of that and you've got a mature implementation that's been in the
field for years- so the code bugs are hopefully already addressed.  We've
all seen how well proxies adapted to "new" stuff, and DPI has had the same
set of issues- the problem isn't so much the buzzword as the amount of work
necessary to do a good job coupled with the brain-deadedness of most
application protocols (security is not addressed in this document...)

 

Paul

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Paul D. Robertson      "My statements in this message are personal opinions

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